Candlelight
by HappyLeifEricsonDay
Summary: (Recently edited.) Sam's only friend is the ever-loyal Tucker, ever since Danny began slowly distancing himself from them after some accident freshman year. She wanted a friend, but she never thought she'd find the one she was looking for in the highly debated ghostly hero of Amity Park.
1. Chapter 1

Hey friends! I know this has been done but I wanted to take a (hopefully) fresh and different crack at it.

AU where Danny was alone when the portal accident happened. You can assume pretty much everything in canon has already happened besides PP, except Danny went through the events alone.

Review and let me know what you think, if you're interested in the story so far, yada yada. You know the deal.

* * *

**Chapter One**

x - x - x

Muted rays of light sifted through the crimson drapes covering the front windows and motes of dust swirled endlessly there, like little fireflies trapped in the beams. Sam reached down once more into the box balanced between her hip and the top rung of the ladder, placing the last latest edition of _The Necronomicon_ in its place on the highest shelf.

The bell chimed, and Sam turned instinctively. But the front door was blocked by the shelves from this viewpoint, so she couldn't see the customer that stepped inside. "Welcome to Skulk and Lurk!" she called as cheerily as she could manage in her current mood. She was exhausted and wanted her shift to be over already. It was the first night she'd been scheduled to work alone though, so she wanted to be on her best behavior to prove she could be trusted.

No one answered.

Descending the ladder quickly, passing rows of candles and jewelry and books and assorted twisted figurines, she rounded the back corner to drop the empty box behind the cashier's desk. From there she peered down the aisle in front of her as the customer came into view. It was the first customer she'd had in an hour and a half. After all it was a Monday night, and it was after eleven. Only a half hour till close. The tall man's back was to her as he leaned in and scanned the titles lined on a mid-level shelf, scratching the back of his neck absently.

"Hey there," Sam offered, forcing herself to be friendly. What she really wanted was to go back to reading the book which was bookmarked on the desk next to her register. "Can I help you with…" her scripted greeting died in her throat as he turned around, one eye brow cocked, his hand still frozen on his neck.

"Sam?" he said, blinking. His eyes flitted back and forth nervously, like she'd caught him in the girl's locker room or something. "You uh… you work here now?"

"Yeah," she answered. "Four weeks now." What in the hell was he doing here?

"That's cool I guess," he said, flashing her a shy smile.

"Let me know if you need anything," she replied frigidly, snapping abruptly back into Customer Service Speak. She picked up her paperback from the desk, gluing her eyes to it. She didn't want to look at his face anymore. But the words swam around meaninglessly, and she read the same paragraph five times without processing a word of it before a small cough brought her back to reality. She glanced over the top of the book and Danny was standing there in front of her desk.

He bit his lip, like he was debating what to say. "I know you haven't worked here long but are you familiar enough with everything to help me find a specific book?"

She contemplated all the icy things she would like to say to him, before carefully squashing them. "What are you looking for?"

"A history of the hauntings in Amity. Any would do, really."

Sam pressed the broken stick of incense she'd been using as a pseudo-bookmark back into the pages, and circled around the desk, not waiting to see if he was following her down to the last aisle. "Nonfiction section," she said, pointing to the paper taped to the side of the shelf.

"Oh... Duh," he said with a chuckle.

Sam paused and crouched down to peer at the line of W authors. Warren… Westfall… Whittaker. "There are lots of different accounts, but I personally think this is the best one. It's got primary sources along with the research. Letters, journal entries, old articles, stuff like that."

He accepted the book and looked at the cover. _A History of the Paranormal in Amity Park by Philip G. Whittaker._ He flipped through, glancing at the varied entries. "This is perfect. Thanks, Sam."

He smiled at her again crookedly, but it didn't reach his tired eyes. She hated that. His smile looked sad and guilty, and he shouldn't _get _to feel like that.

She hadn't stood this close to him in god knew how long. She hadn't realized how much taller he'd gotten, now towering a whole head over her. Though she wasn't surprised, considering the monstrous size of Jack. His shoulders were broader than she remembered, his jaw more defined. Bags under his eyes. Dark dirt smudged almost like smoke on his cheekbone, on the side his neck. His black flyaway hair somehow more wild than ever. It was the same face she knew, the same voice, but the person in front of her was almost a stranger. "I'll just ring you up, then," she said, pushing past him back to the desk. "Unless you need anything else."

"Nope," he replied, following closely. "This is it."

She could feel his eyes on her as she scanned the book and threw it into one of the brown paper bags, the words _Skulk and Lurk _imprinted on the side in gothic black font. "Seventeen fifty," she told him, glancing at the screen of the register.

He dug his wallet out of his back pocket slowly, and sifted through papers and tickets and one dollar bills.

"What do you want that book for anyway?" she said before she could stop herself.

He paused in his search, looking up at her.

"It's just that you never used to come to this store," she said. Not to mention her deep suspicion that he had a pathological fear of ghosts. She definitely wasn't going to mention that.

He scratched his nose, pulled a crumpled twenty from the back of the wallet. "I dunno. Research, and stuff. For my parents," he added quickly.

"Right." Sam pressed the half shredded twenty onto the pile in the drawer, and gave him back his change.

"So.. how's Tucker?" Danny asked, opting to inspect the paper bag on the counter instead of looking at her.

Sam picked up her book, blocking his face from view again. "Why don't you ask him yourself?" she told him coldly. She heard him sigh but didn't look up until the bell chimed at the front door, just to check that he was really leaving. But his eyes met hers and he gave a small wave. "Bye Sam."

And he was gone.

. . . . .

"You wanna tell me what the heck is bothering you?" Tucker asked, setting his PDA down on the gray tabletop.

Sam looked up at him from her salad, which she'd been stabbing at with her fork without really taking any bites. "Nothing's wrong," she assured him.

Tucker folded his arms over his chest. "I've been talking about how this delicious burger is for like five minutes and you haven't said a single accusing statement."

She sighed. "Sorry, Tuck. I guess I'm just kind of out of it." Her gaze fell on the boy leaning against the far wall of the cafeteria, staring into space as he bit into a red apple. The students milling around the cafeteria arched around him as they passed, leaving a wide bubble of space between themselves and him. Sam glowered and stabbed into her salad once more.

Tucker followed her gaze to where Danny stood and then glanced back at Sam questioningly.

Sam rolled her eyes, huffing. "He came into the store last night."

"Oh. Really?"

"Yeah, really. He wanted a book on the history of Amity Park hauntings, can you believe that?"

"That's weird."

"You're telling me."

Tucker and Sam had a running theory (based on a wealth of evidence) that much of the change in Danny had to do with a paralyzing fear of the paranormal. So this was a little confusing, to say the least.

"He's just so different," Sam growled. "But he's still the same! It's infuriating, you know?"

"Did he talk to you?" Tucker asked softly, twirling his PDA around on the table.

"A bit. He had the nerve to ask how you were," she seethed.

"What did you say?"

"I told him to ask you himself." She stuffed a bit of dressing slathered lettuce into her mouth.

"Don't be so angry, Sam," he told her gently. "It's beyond our control, you know."

"Whatever," she snapped. "I'm over it."

Danny was leaving the cafeteria now, backpack slung lazily over one shoulder. The students parted warily as he walked through them.

. . . . .

Saturday night she got on her bike and started pedaling. She loved the way the winded rushed past her, the way the asphalt blurred beneath the tires. She must have ridden through every street in this city a thousand times over.

Her favorite place to ride was in the park though. Living in a city meant she couldn't get the daily dose of nature she craved, not without riding well beyond the city limits into the forest. So the park, littered with grass and trees, squirrels and rabbits and gophers, was the next best thing. Plus they had a kickass bike trail curving through it.

It must have been one in the morning, since she'd gotten home from work after midnight. There was no one in the park, save for one homeless man passed out on a blanket underneath a tall oak tree. Sam leaned her bike against the fountain when she paused to take a drink. She cursed herself for having forgotten the little spider backpack she usually brought which housed a water bottle.

She sputtered and nearly choked when she heard a huge crash behind her, like the paved bike trail had exploded.

She spun around and saw smoke rising, scattered debris, a small crater where a ghost was trying to sit up. It was one she'd seen many times, one of the more frequent attackers of Casper High. Skulker, Phantom called him.

Speaking of Phantom, the ghost flickered into view just as Skulker raised his mechanical left arm, a whining sound as it glowed blue with a pending attack. He raised a transparent shield that easily blocked Skulker's blast.

Sam stood frozen, backed against the stone drinking fountain. She could run, but Skulker was a mere twenty feet from her. She didn't want to draw attention to herself. Neither had noticed her yet. She cursed herself again for forgetting her backpack. Her only defense weapon was in there, a Fenton wrist ray she'd bought when they'd made them commercially available. On more than one occasion it had proved itself useful. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She knew she shouldn't be going out without it, especially during hours of high ghost activity.

Phantom easily dodged two more bright blasts that Skulker sent after him, and then froze his raised arm solid when it began to glow again. "Are we going to do this all night or do you wanna just get in my thermos now so I can get some sleep?" he drawled down lazily at the seething ghost.

"You should have more respect, whelp," Skulker growled as he launched himself sideways out of the way of the beam of blue light that erupted forward from the thermos in Phantom's hands. A Fenton thermos Sam knew, though no one knew how the ghost came by it, or why his was working and none of Jack and Maddie's ever came to full functionality. Phantom never stuck around long enough after his battles to answer questions like that.

"Skulker, I respect you about as much as I respect a rock in my shoe."

"A rock in your – I'm no small annoyance, insolent child. More like your worst nightmare!" Skulker yelled, unleashing wild blasts of light at Phantom, who seemed to dodge them with great ease.

Phantom just laughed, and between dodging he conjured up what looked like a giant ball of pure ice, and hurtled it at his opponent. It caught Skulker off guard, shattering into a thousand pieces on and into his metal chest. There was a strangled cry as the hulking ghost plummeted downward, towards _her, _and Sam lunged sideways wildly, smacking her shoulder and head into the ground with sickening force, and felt the weight of the ghost shake the earth as he smashed the stone fountain.

Her head spun and in her daze she thought _there goes my bike._

"Hey!" She looked around. The grass wavered, a luminous face in front of her out of focus. "Hey, are you okay?" He pulled on her hand and she sat up willingly, shaking away the dizzies. "I didn't see you there," he told her, concern heavy in his voice.

The pile of smoking metal rustled and there was a mangled growl from somewhere within it.

"Hold on a moment," he said, and his hand left her arm. She watched him slam down feet first on what used to be Skulker's chest, dented beyond recognition, small sparks flying where he was impaled with ice. Phantom crouched down and tore Skulker's head from his shoulders without preamble, and Sam shuddered. A tiny voice, much higher in pitch, raged from within the iron head. "You won't get away with this! I'll be back! I always come-" Phantom had pulled the Thermos from where it hung from the white belt at his waist and fired it up. The grating voice turned to a shriek as a tiny green thing was sucked into the tractor beam, and the light died away with the voice.

In an instant Phantom's face loomed in front of her, and he was grabbing for her hand. "I'm so sorry," he breathed. His voice echoed softly, like it was coming in on a bad radio connection. All ghosts sounded something like that. "Did you hit your head? It looked like it…"

She was always taken aback by Phantom's demeanor, even though she knew to expect it. "I… I'm fine," she told him, allowing him to pull her to her feet. "Really," she added, when he continued gazing at her in alarm, unconvinced.

She brushed at the streaks of mud on her black jeans and her arms, hoping to god her parents were asleep when she got home. She didn't want to explain this. Speaking of home… She groaned when her eyes fell on the tangled mess of her bike. Half of it was sticking out from under Skulker's remains, and it was very clearly beyond hope of salvation.

"What?" Phantom asked quickly. "What's wrong?"

"It's just my bike," she groaned. "It's totally trashed!"

Phantom cringed as he spotted it. "God, I'm sorry. This is totally my fault."

Sam rolled her eyes. "It's not your fault. But now I'm stranded a billion miles from my house."

Phantom quirked an eyebrow at her. "I could uh.. I could give you a ride. If you want," he hastily added, looking away.

She had to admit, the idea of a ghost flying her home sounded both terrifying and exhilarating all at once. She found herself saying, "That'd actually be awesome."

He perked up, grinning at her. "Okay. Here, take my hand. It might feel a bit funny at first…" He peered at her as she pressed her hand into his tough white glove. "Are you scared?" he asked.

She scoffed. "Uh no. It's not as if I've never done it... you've saved me a couple times before you know."

He chuckled. "Yeah, I know. This is different than being carried though."

As he said it, a tingling sensation spread from her hand through her arm, settling like frost into her body. Gravity vanished without warning, and her feet bobbed up from the grass. A wave of butterflies shot through her. "Woah," she whispered, and she drifted toward him as he tugged her arm gently upward, like a wayward balloon on a string. "Yeah this is really different. How are you doing this?"

"I can extend my flight to someone as easily as I can make them intangible. Pretty cool, huh?"

"Way cool," she agreed.

Phantom began flying toward the end of the park, with Sam drifting numbly next to him, focusing on the feel of the cool night wind in her hair. What would happen if he were to let her go? She smothered that train of thought immediately. "You probably want directions," she stated.

His head twitched around toward her. "Oh.. yeah. Directions. Show me the way, oh damsel in distress!"

"If you call me that again you can drop me off at the next corner," she said dryly, but the ghost just laughed.

While the bike ride had taken fifteen minutes, the flight home took less than three.

"That's my window there," Sam told him, pointing to the dark glass in the upper right corner of her house. She shuddered involuntarily as a wash of cold overtook her, and they phased directly through the brick wall into her bedroom. The tingling cool feeling lifted abruptly when they touched down on her carpet and Phantom dropped her hand.

"Thanks for the lift," she said genuinely.

"No big deal. I really am sorry about your bike," he muttered, running a hand through his ruffled white hair.

"Eh, whatever. I got my paycheck yesterday so I'll just get a better one. I was planning on it soon anyway."

"That's good I guess. And are you sure you're alright? It looked like you hit your head pretty hard." He chuckled to himself. "Plus, there are leaves in your hair still."

Sam flushed, sifting her hands through her hair and feeling several crunchy leaves snagged in there. "I'm really fine," she assured him. "My head just hurts a bit."

"Alright." He ran his hand through his hair again, almost like he was nervous. "I'll be going, I guess."

"Wait a sec."

He paused, one leg having already stepped through her outer wall.

She let her handful of leaves drift to the floor. "I uh.. I'm Sam," she said, lamely.

He looked at her blankly. His green eyes glowed like neon Vegas lights.

"I just wanted to introduce myself," she continued, not sure why she was still talking at all. She told herself to shut up, but she didn't. "I mean, I've met you a few times before. I know your name, so I thought you should know mine." She felt her cheeks grow red despite herself, feeling exceedingly dumb.

He smiled and floated over, extending his hand. "Well it's nice to meet you for real then, Sam." He cocked his head, peering at her oddly as she shook his hand. "You're really not afraid of me at all, are you?"

"No. Why, should I be?" she joked.

"Nah, it's just that most people are."

"Most people are pretty stupid," she replied honestly, "so I wouldn't take it personally."

"I try not to," he snickered. "You know, you're the first person that's introduced themselves to me like that."

"What can I say? I'm friendly," she said, shrugging.

"A friendly goth?" he said with fake shock. "That's pretty unbelievable."

"So's a friendly ghost," she countered, resting one hand on her hip. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Uh.. depends on the question." He drifted lazily backwards, folding his arms behind his head.

"How come you don't use your hero voice on me?"

He scratched his nose ponderously. "Uh.. hero voice?"

"I see you around all the time you know. Whenever you're talking to citizens you throw on this tough guy voice. 'Don't be afraid, citizen!'" she mocked while wagging her finger, mimicking the way he deepens his tone. "But you don't do that when you're shouting at ghosts, and you've definitely never talked to me like that."

He shrugged. "I dunno. I guess I'm just trying to make them less afraid, by pretending to know what I'm doing."

"You don't bother to use the voice with me," she reminded him.

He simply shrugged again, looking away toward the window. "I have to get going, Sam."

"Where do you go when you're not battling ghosts?"

He peered over his shoulder at her. "What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?" he said dryly. She was about to apologize when he said, "Just around. Around Amity, making sure it's safe."

"Don't you ever get bored of being Amity's guard dog?"

"Like you wouldn't believe," he said, with over-exaggerated grimness.

She laughed. "Well you know, if you ever get super bored you could always visit me. I get bored a lot too." Lonely, bored. What was the difference?

The corners of his mouth twitched downward. "I want to take you up on that, but it's a bad idea."

"Why?"

"I.. I have a lot of enemies. I can't really afford to make friends with people."

"We don't have to be friends," she suggested. "But if you ever wanted to stop by we could be friendly acquaintances."

His frown weakened. "I'll think about it."

"One more question," she added abruptly as he floated toward her wall again. "Earlier when I said you'd saved me before, you said 'I know.' Does that mean you remember me? Saving me, I mean?"

His eyebrows scrunched a bit. "How could I forget something like that?" he said quietly. And before she could reply he had vanished through her wall, and she was alone in the dim room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

x - x - x

Senior year, Calculus was the only class Sam had with Danny in it. On the days he showed up, anyway. Out of habit Sam usually haunted the back row of every classroom so she could doodle without being reprimanded, but in Calculus she sat in the front. _Danny_ was in the back. This way she could basically pretend he wasn't there, and she was never in danger of getting partnered up with him. Mr. Craft had some sort of obsession with team projects. He had a firm belief that it was easier to learn if you were doing it with a partner. It was beyond annoying.

But today, she was fine with it. Because the irritatingly loquacious drama club girl who usually sat next to her (hence, typical partner) hadn't shown up. So Sam would be allowed to work alone today on the worksheet Mr. Craft was now passing out.

About ten minutes after the bell had rung, she was just reaching problem three when the classroom door opened. Danny Fenton shuffled in, looking rather ruffled, dragging his backpack on the floor behind him.

Mr. Craft cleared his throat. "That's three times this week, Mr. Fenton," he drawled, making a check on the sheet on his desk. "And more times than I can count for the whole semester."

"Sorry, Mr. Craft, it's just that I was-"

He stopped when the teacher raised a hand. "I don't want to hear your excuse. Who doesn't have a partner yet?" he said, turning to the class at large. Sam's eyes flickered across the students, who all hastily turned away or averted their eyes. Nobody wanted to be _Fenton's _partner, she could see in on their uneasy faces. People at school talked about Danny, whispered rumors. They wondered about him, about his strange behavior. They were wary of him. Sam, though, she had stopped caring a long time ago. She _had_ to, for the sake of her own sanity.

She was horrified but not surprised when Mr. Craft's eyes landed on her. "Sam, Danny will be joining you in this worksheet. Would you mind catching him up to speed?"

Her pencil felt like it might snap from how hard she was gripping it, but she said, "Sure, why not?" and didn't know whether she was being sarcastic or not.

Danny sat gingerly in the empty desk next to her. Every other pair of partners had scooted their desks together but Danny remained where he was.

He stared at the paper like it was written in a foreign language. "Is this from the notes we took yesterday?" he said slowly.

"Yeah." Oh right, Danny had skipped class yesterday. Again. …Not that she kept track or anything. "Here, you can look at mine," she said, tossing her composition book onto his desktop.

"Thanks," he breathed, opening to the latest page of scribbles. "Oh I get it. New formula."

He began scribbling into the space below problem one. "Hey is this what you got?" he asked once he was done, disturbing Sam from her work on problem four. She peered over at his mess of numbers and variables, trying to decipher it.

"Uh… no." Not even remotely close. "See, you need to distribute this part first… here take a look at mine."

Danny turned red and began to erase his work. "That… makes a lot more sense," he said sheepishly as he glanced over Sam's answers. He caught up to her quickly, checking his answers against hers. "Thanks for helping me out," he said shyly, keeping his eyes trained on his paper.

She gripped her pencil even harder. Surely it would splinter soon. Why did Danny have to make it so hard to hate him? Sometimes she would catch him looking at her and Tucker as they passed in the halls, she'd catch a slight frown, and defeated hunch in his shoulders. She had to remind herself that it was _him _who abandoned the friendship, and not them. Because the sad way he looked at them made it seem otherwise.

_Don't think about it_, she commanded herself.

"So, you reading that book?" she said as they paused after problem five, when the silence started getting to her. Everyone else in the class was chattering softly.

He glanced over at her. "Oh uh, yeah. It's pretty interesting stuff."

She wouldn't have thought Danny would choose the word 'interesting' to describe ghosts. Not the Danny who ran and hid the moment they showed up, who back in freshman year used to pale visibly whenever his parents mentioned them. She frowned at her paper, trying to convince herself she wasn't still desperately wishing she knew what was wrong with him.

When they got to problem ten, Danny suddenly stiffened in his chair. He glanced up warily, casting his eyes around the room.

A moment later there was a girlish scream from the back of the classroom. A tiny squidlike ghost the size of a basketball had attached itself to a girl in the back room, and she was flailing her arms trying to remove it. There were several more screams as three identical ghosts phased up through the floor and started slinking their way toward students. Mass panic happened instantaneously. Everyone was tearing out of their seats, stumbling for the opposite end of the classroom, one of the jocks shoved past Sam and sent her falling behind the teacher's desk.

Well, it wasn't an average day at Casper High without a ghost attack.

The only person left in the back was the girl crying hysterically, trying to remove the glowing squid from her leg. Sam rose from the floor, drawn by the pain in the girl's voice. Everyone had fled the classroom but Mr. Craft, who was tearing at his hair, obviously terrified but not wanting to abandon a student. There were six squids now, and they were all slithering towards Sam and the teacher.

Sam wasn't too worried though, because it wasn't an average ghost attack on Casper High without Danny Phantom showing up.

And speak of the devil, Phantom flew through the wall and sent a blast of bright green ectoplasm that dislodged the squid from the girl's leg easily. He sucked it up into his mysterious thermos quickly, turning the blue tractor beam on the scattering ghosts on the floor. It was literally over in a matter of seconds.

Mr. Craft collapsed against the whiteboard, clutching his heart.

"Jeez, some days I feel like they're not even trying," Phantom said to himself, capping his thermos. He looked up and noted Sam and Mr. Craft there. He flew over to them slowly, keeping a healthy distance from Mr. Craft. "Are you going to be okay?" he asked, watching the teacher's chest heaving. Craft nodded numbly. "I gotta go round the rest of these up. There were some out in the hall.. god only knows where else they are." They all looked downward as a scream resonated up from the classroom below them.

He cocked his head toward Sam, smiling wryly. "But fear not, citizen!" he told her, wagging his finger and speaking in a tone far deeper than the one he'd had before. "Danny Phantom is on the job."

Right, hero voice. She rolled her eyes heavily at him. He winked playfully and did a backflip into the floor, vanishing without a trace.

The students slowly meandered back in over the next ten minutes, and Mr. Craft was flustered but demanded the students continued their work for the remaining fifteen minutes of class. Ghost attacks happened too often to allow them to disturb the learning process.

Sam hadn't even noticed Danny slip out amidst all the previous chaos. He didn't come back with all the other students.

Not that she was surprised. She'd have been more surprised if he did. When the bell rang she turned in his half-finished assignment for him.

. . . . .

It was a Saturday night again. A normal Saturday night meant bike riding for her, but she still hadn't gotten around to buying a new one. Saturday used to be movie marathon night with Tucker, but they'd changed it to Sunday ever since she started Saturday shifts at Skulk and Lurk. So she'd usually ride her bike for a bit once she got home to relieve the boredom.

But now, she was stuck with nothing to do. It was one in the morning but she wasn't remotely tired. She was laying the wrong way on her bed, letting her hair trail off the foot end of it, holding her book over her head. Heavy metal poured out of the speakers on her computer. Her parents' room was on the opposite end of the enormous house, so she could really put it on full blast and they still wouldn't hear.

She rested the book on her face, letting her arms fall to the sides. This book was not what the book jacket had cracked it up to be. It was exceedingly cheesy and overwritten. She contemplated just abandoning it altogether. But there wasn't another book in her house she hadn't already read, and she was bored out of her mind.

There was a tapping sound on the glass of her window. She turned to look, and the book slid off her face onto the floor. She got up and silenced the music, listening. She was convinced she'd imagined it when it happened again.

When she got to the dark window she lifted it, and found herself staring straight into Phantom's luminous eyes. "Oh, hi," she managed.

"Is this a bad time?" he asked, taking in her shocked expression.

"No, not at all. I was just surprised. You can come in, you know," she said, stepping aside when he lingered there outside.

"Did I interrupt you reading?" he asked, looking at the book forgotten on the floor.

"Nah. That book is absolutely terrible."

"So what were you doing?"

"You know, thinking about the injustice in society and whatnot, the fleeting nature of humanity. Normal teenage girl stuff. Hey, your hero voice didn't work on me by the way. It definitely didn't inspire confidence. In fact, I may have actually _lost _confidence in you."

"Ah, now that's just mean."

Sam settled on the edge of her bed, trying not to think about the fact that there was a ghost in her room. That she was hanging out with a ghost. Whom she had invited. Not just any ghost either, it was The Ghost, the most infamous one, the heavily debated hero (or villain, depending on how deluded you were) of Amity Park. She fought back a grin, wondering what Paulina and her fan club would say about this.

"Hey, weird question, do you happen to have any gauze?" he asked her, sitting cross-legged midair in front of her. "I kind of nicked my hand earlier."

Sam blinked. A ghost who wanted gauze. Now that was interesting. "I'll be right back," she told him, and wandered off to her bathroom. When she got back he had taken off his long white glove and was inspecting the palm of his hand.

"Come here," she commanded.

"I can do it," he replied haughtily, reaching out for the gauze.

"One handed?" she intoned, raising an eyebrow. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Now give me your stupid hand."

He sheepishly allowed her to take him by the wrist. His skin was cold to the touch like marble, and she shivered. _Nicked_ his hand? The long gash on the palm of his hand looked ghastly, and oozed radiant ectoplasm where a human would have bled. She paled at the sight of it.

"Don't worry about it," he said. "It doesn't hurt that much." He held very still as she wrapped the white gauze gingerly around his skin.

"I didn't know ghosts needed gauze," she said conversationally as he carefully pulled his glove on over the bandage.

He chuckled. "They don't. I like it though. Keeps me from bleeding out like a stuck pig." He flexed and unflexed his fingers. "Thanks, that feels great actually. Don't worry, I heal fast anyway."

"That's gotta be nifty as hell," she said.

He glanced up, amusement dancing in his eyes. "Yeah, it's nifty alright. My most nifty power."

"So are you here because you're bored?" she asked, leaning back onto her elbows.

"Actually, yeah. No ghosts about tonight so far."

"Is it nice to take a break?"

"You have no idea."

"I'm kinda flattered," she said. "The ghost boy has free time and he wants to hang out with _me_, a lowly human?" she said melodramatically.

"The lowly human sounded like she wanted some company last time I talked to her."

Sam shrugged. "Yeah. I get kinda bored sometimes. Most of the people who go to Casper are pricks. I only have one real friend to hang with. He's awesome, but he's not free a hundred percent of the time, you know?"

"Yeah, that's gotta suck. I understand what you mean about the high school. I mean, I have to spend a lot of my time there because of the attacks, and I've seen how bad the students can be."

"You know, it's hard to believe you're this bored when there's a fan club devoted to worshipping you. Don't you know those girls would trip over themselves for a chance to have a conversation with you?"

Phantom cringed noticeably. "Yeah I try to pretend that thing doesn't exist… Did you know that one of them has what can only be described as a _shrine _in their locker dedicated to me?"

Sam burst out laughing. "You mean Paulina? Yeah, she's completely obsessed with you. She tells anyone she can that you're her boyfriend. It's actually pretty sad. Don't worry, no one believes her," she added at the struck expression on Phantom's face.

"That's good, I guess."

"So… you wanna do something?"

He drifted idly forward. Sometimes it looked like he was lazily following the direction of a slight breeze, like he wasn't actually controlling the way he moved. "Like what?" he asked, cocking his head to the side the way he did. Like a puppy when you called it's name.

"I dunno. What do ghosts like to do?"

He grinned widely at her, his smile all shining teeth. "I like to do everything humans like to do."

"I was gonna throw on the album I was listening to, but for some reason you don't strike me as a heavy metal kind of guy."

He contemplated that. "I'm more like a rock n roll kind of guy." A ghost who listens to rock n roll. Go figure.

"I can do rock n roll," Sam admitted. His grin was infectious. She could feel it spreading to her cheeks. "Who do you listen to?"

"You ever heard of Blue Oyster Cult?"

She shook her head slowly.

"You like sick guitar riffs?"

She nodded.

"Perfect."

So Sam jammed with a ghost for three hours before her parents walked in unceremoniously and told her to shut off the noise and go to sleep. When she glanced up in shock, he had disappeared from his place lounging on her ceiling. When her parents left she climbed under her covers, feeling oddly dejected. She jumped when he materialized in the exact same place he'd been lounging before, having never moved.

"Goodnight, Sam," he said quietly. His green eyes cast the whole room in a strange dim light. His body glowed softly against the black roof.

"Night, Phantom," she whispered back.

"Call me Danny," he replied before slipping away through her ceiling.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

x - x - x

Seeing Phantom at school was a new level of strange. In all honesty Sam didn't think she'd gone a full week since freshman year of high school without seeing some trace of the ghost around Casper High, but now when she saw him it was different.

She'd have been lying to herself if she said it wasn't satisfying to see Phantom speed past a sighing Paulina attempting to flag him down, but slow down enough to flash Sam a wide grin before going after the offending ghost. Secrets were fun, and this was the funnest secret she'd ever had.

After that first rock filled Saturday night, Sam had spent the majority of Sunday soaking up corny horror movies in her basement theater with Tucker. Her meeting with Phantom was on the tip of her tongue the whole night, but for some reason she refrained from telling him. She couldn't justify to herself why – after all there wasn't a secret in the world she kept from Tucker. But for whatever reason she kept her mouth shut about it.

"Ha! Comere you…"

"You stay back! Fuck- No, _get outta here!_"

The muscles in Sam's thumbs convulsed as she tried desperately to get away, but Donkey Kong finally caught up with her on the highest platform and unleashed his massively frustrating bongos-attack.

"Goddammit!" Sam shrieked as her Kirby flew up and smashed comically into the screen. She threw the controller down in anguish as Phantom laughed maniacally next to her. She turned to glare but it was hard not to laugh at him. He looked so ridiculous hanging upside-down in the air like that. His shining white hair spilling down below his face like a waterfall of snow. He looked too damn smug.

"_Told_ you I could beat you playing upside-down."

"Yeah well fuck you!" she sulked, folding her arms. She wouldn't have guessed in a million years that _Danny Phantom_ would kick her ass at Super Smash Bros. Tucker was the king of that game, and Sam could even beat him on her better days. So imagine her surprise when a _ghost _of all things smacked her down like a fly.

"Ah, don't be a sore loser," Phantom prodded, gently twisting around so that he was lounging on his stomach. "I'm just good at it because I don't abide by the laws of gravity."

"Must be nice," she sneered.

"Oh it's very nice," he answered genuinely. "Wanna play again?"

"I don't feel like losing _again," _she retorted. She wanted to wipe the smirk off his face. "Why are you so good at video games anyway?"

"I was a big fan of them before I died," he shrugged.

"Oh," she said carefully, noting his vanished smile. He always seemed to be a bit touchy about the subject of his death, like most ghosts were. So Sam tried to skirt around it when possible. After a moment of him staring blankly at DK posing triumphantly as the winner on the TV screen, Sam suddenly shivered.

He snapped to attention, giving her a furtive glance before drifting off to the other end of the room.

"Hey, why do you do that?"

Phantom gazed down from his new spot in the upper corner by her window. "Do what?"

"When you float too close to me you act like I shocked you and fly away. I don't freakin bite, you know," she added in a hurt tone.

He looked exceedingly guilty. "It's not you. It's just.. you were shivering."

She took a moment to process that, thinking about the goosebumps on her bare arms and legs. "Oh… Is that because of you?" She remembered the cool feel of the skin on his wrist, the way his breath came almost like morning mist when he spoke in her direction. And here she was thinking the AC was just on too high.

"When I stay in one place too long it.. starts to get a little colder. I can.. I can go if you want."

"No!" she said quickly. "Come on, like I care. I'm a Goth, remember? Our hearts are made of frost." She grinned wickedly.

He scoffed. "Your heart is _not_ made of frost."

"Oh yeah and how would you know?"

Phantom gave her a dubious look that plainly said '_honey, please'_ and she crossed her arms defiantly at him. He answered by saying, "Come off it, you care way too much. For the past two hours you've been talking non-stop about that article you read about PETA and telling me how hypocritical their practices are, and talking about what they really should be doing in regards to animal rights… Oh and last time I was here you were all up in arms about the new immigration law – What?" He paused at the look on Sam's face.

"…You were actually listening to all that?"

"Well.. yeah?" He blinked, confusion evident on his face.

"Sorry.. It's just that when I talk to Tucker about that kind of stuff he zones out with record speed. I can't actually remember the last time someone _listened _when I ranted about those things. And for the love of god, will you stop haunting my ceiling and come back down here already, Phantom? I swear I don't care that you're cold." She scooted backwards on the soft carpet to lean against her bed frame and dragged the blanket over the edge and threw it over her pale legs. "See? Perfect."

Reluctantly he descended from the ceiling, hovering a few feet away from her. "You still calling me that?" he asked lightly.

She averted her eyes, opting to watch Donkey Kong repeatedly strike the same victory pose. Phantom had dropped in on her every weekend since September when he first showed up, so that was four visits now. And he'd reminded her every time that he preferred 'Danny.'

"I'm sorry," she offered. "It just feels weird to call you Danny." She chanced a glance at him, wondering what to say. "In case I haven't made it clear, I've never had very many friends. And I used to have a best friend named Danny."

"Used to? …What happened?" There was thinly veiled curiosity in his glowing eyes.

Sam sighed heavily and poked at the joystick of the controller on the floor, biting her lip. Seeing Danny face to face so much recently had only drudged up a bunch of shitty what-ifs and emotions that she thought she'd successfully buried. But she was not about to get into all that with a ghost that she barely knew.

He seemed to sense her hesitation and added, "I'm sorry, you don't have to answer that. In case I haven't made it clear, I don't have _any _friends. I can be really tactless, but it's just cause I'm out of practice." He grinned apologetically. "Ignore me, I'm an ass. Rant about PETA some more." He rested his cheek against his forearms, effectively hiding half his face, his bright eyes peaking up playfully over his loose black sleeves.

"Oh shut up, it's okay. But I really am not getting humiliated with another round of this game, so let's do something else."

"Actually," he glanced at the clock on her nightstand flashing 1:40am, "as much as I hate to say this, I should really go patrol for awhile."

"What, am I distracting you from your guard dog duties?"

"Maybe a little."

"Oh whatever, go find some ghost to beat up on. I'll beat up on Donkey Kong while you're gone to vent my frustration of getting my ass whooped."

"You gonna stay up much longer?"

"Probably. Why, are you gonna come back later?"

"Probably."

. . . . .

On a Tuesday night in late October, Sam tucked her hands behind her head and lost the battle with yawning. The only light in the room was the yellow flame of a fat candle burning low in her windowsill, and the faint whitish glow emanating from the other occupant in the room.

Above her, Phantom immediately mirrored the action against his will. "Made you yawn," she declared sleepily. Apparently that worked even on ghosts.

"It's your turn," he mumbled, his foot kicking methodically as he rested his ankle on his knee. It was truly a struggle to stay awake with her intensely fluffy pillow cushioning her head. Phantom lay above her on the ceiling like a reflection. He had this habit of hanging out everywhere in her room except for the floor or furniture.

"Okay…" She felt another yawn rising and stifled it. It was well past three in the morning but she didn't feel like sleeping just yet. "Well one time, I was at the mall with Tucker and Danny.. this was in like eighth grade I think. We'd cut class to pick up the new release of Zombie Splatter.. we knew it would be sold out by the time school got out. Anyway, we were in GameZone just looking around when suddenly our _gym teacher _walks in. Like what was he even _doing_ there? Naturally we all dove out of sight, but freakin' Tucker just _had_ to hide behind the cashier's desk, and he knocked over the poor chick behind there. Totally tangled together. She was screeching 'Pervert!' and me and Danny were beside ourselves laughing. Do I even have to say that we got caught? Yeah we got kicked out of the mall, gym teacher saw us there, we got a week of detention. That game was fun as hell though."

Phantom was snickering. "Do you have any stories about Tucker that _don't _involve embarrassing him?" he joked.

"Not many," she kidded. "Alright ghost boy, now you go."

"Hmm… Okay, I got one. Once, Skulker handcuffed me to the Red Huntress – you've see her about right? And he dropped us on his island in the Ghost Zone to hunt us both at once. It was kind of a nightmare."

"…You're kidding me right?"

"I wish," he said dryly.

"…So? Is that it?"

"Well, we escaped, if that's what you mean."

"You know, you have great stories, but your delivery could use some definite improvement."

"Are you saying I need.. a _ghostwriter?"_

After a moment of contemplating his shit-eating grin she deadpanned, "That was probably the stupidest pun I've ever heard."

"Ouch, Sam! Alright, alright. Your turn again."

Sam stifled another pending yawn with the back of her hand. "I'm too tired.. to tell another story…" she mumbled, feeling her eyelids flutter.

"You want me to go so you can sleep?"

"You can leave… once I pass out," she commanded groggily. "Entertain me till then."

She let her eyes close for a few brief moments, but they shot open when something cold and wet touched her face. Her hand shot up to her cheek instinctively and she felt a few flecks of… snow? "Too cold!" she snapped at him as he snickered up on her ceiling. She buried her face under her thick purple blanket and said "Go snow on someone else, Invisobill!"

"Nah.. this is too much fun."

She peaked, and saw with relief that he wasn't releasing any more snow. "Why do you hang around me anyway?" she asked quietly.

"You asked me to," he replied with a shrug of the shoulders.

A sleepy smile crept onto her face. "Yeah but I never in a million years thought you would take me up on it. Why me? Out of anyone else?"

"To be honest?" He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced away. The movement of his flashing green irises was vivid in the otherwise dark room. "I missed people. I wanted to talk to someone. Anyone. And you were the realest girl I'd ever met. Other people, when they meet me, either love me or hate me. They treat me like a hero or they treat me like a villain. You.. treated me like a person."

She blinked lazily, his words churning over slowly in her mind. At this point she felt like she had one foot in a dream, and the dark bedroom was growing fuzzier by the moment. "You are a person," she muttered to the inside of her eyelids.

A soft breeze next to her ear whispered, "Night, Sam."

"Night, Danny," she whispered back to the dream.

The room went black as the breeze blew out the dying candle.

. . . . .

The beginning of November brought a string of cold showers to Amity Park, and the world was a constant gray drizzle, the rolling clouds above letting loose sporadically. Leaky faucets in the sky.

Sam opened the door to her bedroom, shook out her shoulder-length dripping hair, and dropped the bag of new candles on her bed. The absolute best thing about working at her favorite store was the twenty percent discount. Four partially melted candles littered the windowsill, all different widths and shades of red. Sam reached for the tallest one and struck a match. It wasn't often that she came into her room and didn't light the signal anymore. Only when she was leaving, changing or showering did she blow out all the candles nowadays.

At around midnight she looked up from _A Clockwork Orange_ when Danny flew in through her window. "Hi," she called, tucking a homemade bookmark into the pages. "Rough night?" she asked tentatively, taking in the tears on his black pants, the rip on his left glove stained with luminescent green, the rip on his collar that led up into a sharp cut on his neck.

He answered her with an exhausted look, plopping down sideways into her computer chair, the tips of his dripping wet hair sticking in every direction. "It was a nightmare," he groaned.

"Wanna talk about it?" she prodded.

"It was some ghost I'd never seen before. Caught her," he muttered, waving his thermos around and setting it down sharply on her desktop. "Stupid ghost was haunting some kid's treehouse. Nearly killed the kid on accident. Some ghosts have the strangest obsessions."

"Obsessions?" she repeated curiously.

His eyes flitted over to Sam, and the chair wheeled around to face her. "Well, yeah. I don't know how much you know about the way ghosts function, but not everyone becomes one. When you do it's because there's something in this life that you're so attached to that you just can't let it go. Like you know Skulker - his obsession is hunting. I know you've seen Technus around at the school, and it won't surprise you to know his obsession is with technology. Stuff like that."

She cocked her head at him, and she could see in his changed expression that he sensed the question forming on her lips. "Do you have an obsession, Danny?"

A smile might have flickered for a moment at the edge of his lips, but it disappeared. She wanted to take it back, to erase the sudden awkwardness that hung palpable in the air, but she really wanted to know. Raindrops pattered on her window in the silence between them.

After a moment of staring at his bent knees he answered. "Yeah, I think I do. When I died I didn't have a clear conviction in mind, but it's been made pretty crystal to me since then. I protect Amity Park."

That wasn't very surprising. "At least your obsession isn't boxes," she told him, thinking of the Box Ghost.

His face lit up at that, snapping quickly out of his reverie.

Sam made him listen to her music that night. She was going to convert him to the dark black music that her parents hated oh so much. He listened to the sappy lyrics and he laughed. She couldn't help an unwarranted prickle of sadness when he burst out laughing at one particular line that said "_Take this razor, sign your name across my wrists" _– and she had to admit the line was awfully corny – but her laugh didn't come out because in that moment he sounded just like her old Danny, though his voice was the tinny filtered sound of a ghosts. It sounded like Danny's laugh playing on a quiet record.

She hadn't intentionally been trying to fill the void Danny Fenton left when she befriended Danny Phantom. But it didn't help that they were alike. Phantom reminded her how Fenton _used _to be, back when he was happy. Stupid puns left and right, sloppy smiles, blushing and clumsy... It hurt that this Danny reminded her so much of the other when all she wanted to do was forget him.

Her line of thought crashed as she noticed that _this _Danny was staring at her.

"Can I tell you something?" he asked softly. A new song started up on her speakers, the tinkling strum of a ukulele. Without waiting for her to answer he said, "I know I told you we couldn't be friends, but I think it's kind of obvious that we already are."

"Right, well, a rose by any other name…" At his baffled expression, she clarified, "I'm saying that just because you don't call it 'friends' doesn't mean we aren't friends."

He poked absently at the rip in the callous material of his glove. "I know that. Look.. I gave up the luxury of friendship when I died. I needed to, because I had to put my full focus on protecting Amity. And I couldn't let friends get hurt because of me, and what I do. But this… talking to you… I don't know. I feel so different. It's like I'm waking up again. I've been in a trance for the last few years, just forcing myself to get by. You can't imagine what it's like to finally have a friend again, after all this time. I forgot," he whispered. "I forgot what it was like." His green eyes looked up at her through his eyelashes. "Which is why I'm caving in, against my better judgement."

"What are you saying, exactly?"

His cheeks abruptly turned slightly green, a faint glow coming off of them, reminiscent of his eyes. Sam realized with a shock that he was blushing. "I'm officially asking if we can be friends."

Sam fought the urge to giggle. And she _never, ever _giggled – but the urge was welling up in her now. It was that hilarious glowing blush on his cheekbones. She wondered if he knew that he did that. "You don't have to ask, stupid," she chastised. "I wouldn't leave a candle inviting in someone who I didn't already consider a friend."

His smile could have lit up the entire downtown area.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

x - x - x

"I'm starting to get sick of this tofu burger."

Tucker raised his eyebrows skeptically at her over his thick-rimmed glasses, pausing in his attack on his own dripping burger. God, his looked disgusting. Like someone slaughtered a cow and put it directly between two buns. "You've only taken one bite!" he protested.

"I mean in general," she clarified with a huff. "The vegan options in this city are brutally thin on the ground. And the Nasty Burger is the absolute worst."

"You could share my delicious double-patty melt," he said, wiggling his eyebrows.

She made a horrified gagging face at him, before burying her nose back in the thick book laid next to her tray on the white tabletop.

The open page displayed a newspaper article nearly a century old, a lesser headline reading "_Ghost sighted again at the tracks."_ Underneath was a blurb about the article and the surrounding research.

_In January 1912 a laborer at the railroad named Gregory Amos died of a heart attack. There were reported sightings of his ghost in August of that year, with subsequent sightings reported in 1931 and 1950. (See page 198.) This ghost was not seen again until September 2004, at which time sightings became remarkably frequent and well-documented. (See page 199.) This ghost, whose chosen haunt is any variety of cubic container, is widely known today as the Box Ghost. Origin of ghostly obsession debated. (See page 260.)_

"Earth to Sam?" Tucker was saying across the table, waving his hand over her book. "Come in, do you copy?" He stopped when Sam glanced up from the passage. "Why are you so suddenly obsessed with this book? You've been reading it all week. And you've never been all that interested in ghosts."

"That's not true," she countered. "I love everything dark and scary!" She flashed him her fingernails, which had little black spiders painted on them, as if to prove to him her point. "Ghosts totally fall under that category. Plus, it's interesting," she admitted. "Don't you want to know what people have to say about the ghosts haunting Amity?"

Tucker shrugged indifferently. "I really think I get _enough_ of ghosts just trying to do my daily business."

"Oh I get it," she said with a wink, "you're still sore about your last PDA."

"You're damn right I am! Well why does there have to be a ghost bent on controlling all my electronics anyway?" he fumed, taking a massively angry bite out of his burger, taking nearly half of it off at once.

She rolled her eyes and flipped to page 260 in the _Ghostly Obsessions _section. "So you're saying you're not interested at all in why the Box Ghost haunts boxes?" He was still trying to swallow his monstrous bite so she continued. "It says here one of his coworkers reported that he'd lost the engagement ring box he was planning on giving his girl just before he died. Isn't that tragic? Although there's a part here that says other people reported he never had a girlfriend at all.. So I guess it's really a mystery for the ages," she snickered.

Tucker finally managed to swallow, letting out a proper belch. God he was like a wild animal sometimes. "I don't really care," he answered, wiping the red sauce off his face. "As long as he's not haunting my boxes. Come to think of it, I haven't seen the Box Ghost around for awhile. Doesn't he usually show up at the school at least three times a week?"

"Yeah. Haven't seen him lately though," Sam mused, turning back to the _News Articles_ section, scanning for other familiar ghosts.

Not for the first time since taking this text home from work, Sam wondered idly why Danny Fenton had wanted to read this book. Then she paused for a moment, considering the fact that for the first time ever she had just identified her old best friend by his first _and_ last name subconsciously. Like he was a stranger.

But it was really no mystery to her why. 'Danny' had taken on kind of a new meaning.

She told herself she wasn't doing research on him. She was just interested, that was all. When Danny told her about obsessions a few weeks ago, she had realized just how little she really knew about ghosts. Especially considering one of her best friends was one. _Best friend? Where did that come from?_ Well.. yeah. He kind of _was_ her other best friend. Was it... weird that Sam _didn't _think that was weird?

Sam had always been the kind of girl that loved the stuff other girls hated. When she was in elementary school other girls would play games at recess and she would be with Tucker and Danny luring lizards with dead grasshoppers. When her mom tried to get her to brighten up her wardrobe in middle school, she died her hair black and shaved half of it off. Girly stuff had just never appealed to her. Maybe it was because she was _supposed_ to like it, or maybe because she was psychologically scarred by her fifties pin-up mother. To put it simply, most of her coworkers at Skulk and Lurk had to wear store merchandise, like creepy necklaces, gaudy bodices, stuff like that. Sam didn't have to because her wardrobe already looked like that. Sometimes girls at school sneered and called her a witch. Not like she cared.

All this had to do with why Sam never thought twice about having a ghost for a friend. It just seemed the natural thing to do. It wasn't strange. Ghosts were just a part of life in Amity, so why not make friends with the nice one?

Recently she found she kept having to remind herself that Danny was dead, which felt strange to say, even in her mind. It was just that he acted so human. So normal, in comparison to any other ghost she'd encountered. It was hard to think of him as not alive, when he was so vibrant. It was hard to look into his gemlike eyes and picture him at a moment of death, trying to picture what he looked like before dying. It was even harder when he refused to talk about his former life at all. She had told Danny almost everything about herself, but she knew hardly anything about his life prior to death. Sam couldn't picture him as anyone but who he was right now, couldn't imagine him without that soft candle glow that always hung about him like a hazy mist.

So yeah, if she was being honest, she _was_ doing research. There was a lot in this book about Danny Phantom, since it was published just recently. This past autumn. Every contributing author had their two cents about Phantom. Much of it was terrible and wrong, to her dismay, but some of it was true and showed Danny in his proper light. She grinned as she thumbed over the passage on page 18 detailing the defeat of Pariah Dark, back in Sam's freshman year of high school. She remembered that.

But the book didn't have anything to say about who Danny was before he died. Nobody, anywhere, had anything but empty hands on that topic.

Once, she had asked him.

_"What was your name before you died?" She didn't honestly think his name was always Phantom._

_He glanced up at her sadly from the book he was reading on her bed. "Don't ask me that," he said, without malice. "Please. Don't ask me things I can't answer."_

She was never sure if he didn't remember, or if he just didn't want to remember.

Without admitting to herself how nosy she was being, she'd poured over the obituaries for the entire year of 2004, the year Danny first showed up in Amity Park. And a few years prior to that. And found nothing, really. No pictures that resembled him, no Dannys who died.

Though to be fair, the book in front of her now had spent a large chapter devoted to the highly noted increase of all ghostly activity come September of the year 2004. There were a multitude of theories regarding the reasons behind the sudden rise in ghost attacks at the turn of the century, when ghosts long forgotten suddenly began showing up again. And that was the same time Danny showed up, so in all honesty he really could be any number of decades old. Like the Box Ghost, who died all the way back in 1912 and now haunted every street corner.

Somehow it seemed she would never know who Danny was, which was what made it all the harder to think of him as dead.

Her book closed with a thump and she let out an involuntary sigh, leaning her head back against the booth.

"Nice necklace," Tucker said, crumpling up his burger's wrapper into a tiny ball. "I thought you said you would never be caught dead wearing DP merch? I thought it was too, quote-unquote, mainstream?"

Sam looked down reactively to her neck, where a tiny "DP" symbol rested on a black chain, above the necklace that had a dozen tiny metal bats dangling loosely.

"Since when are you a Phantom fanatic?" he asked skeptically. "You didn't run off and join Paulina's fan club did you?" He gave her a sick expression.

"Um _no,_ I didn't,"she replied hotly. "But I _do_ support Danny Phantom. I mean.. he's a hero, you know? He gets enough hate from this town. People who support him should say so."

"Whatever you say Sammy," he chuckled, getting up to toss their trash. "But I swear if I find a shrine in your locker…"

"_Tucker!"_ She shoved him playfully as they headed out the glass doors.

As they stepped out into the parking lot the two friends stopped cold, halted by a line of chattering onlookers that were crowding under the overhanging roof of the Nasty Burger. It became immediately evident that they were under there for cover, because there was a spectacular aerial battle taking place overhead.

A monstrous red behemoth with a spiked tail whipping like a mace was circling some dozens of feet above them, and it parted its cavernous beak to let loose an ear-shattering roar. An onslaught of smaller crimson ghosts buzzed out of its beak like mosquitos, flapping insectile wings as they descended down toward the panicking crowd. One look at Tucker told her he was going to be sick.

As Sam's hand dipped into her purse instinctively for her only defense (her patented Fenton wrist ray, the mace-spray-for-ghosts) purple flashes of light caught her attention, in that they were coming _up_ from the parking lot and blasted a couple of the looming mosquitoes out of the air. Standing on her toes to look over the citizens bum-rushing the front doors to get inside, Sam saw what was happening. Four nondescript white vans were scattered around the lot, several white motor scooters pulled up and abandoned around the side of the building, with men wearing stark white head to toe bustling out of them, aiming heavy guns into the air.

Even as she watched, two of the mosquitoes were taken down in a net, but a dozen more escaped. She ground her teeth angrily, knowing full well what was about to happen when Danny inevitably arrived on the scene. Sam was never partial to the racist government agency, but in this new light cast on them by her friendship with Danny, they were downright demon spawn to her.

Distantly she felt Tucker yanking on her arm, trying to pull her towards the door, but she had spotted a black blur coming around the far building, a fleeting reflection on the third-story glass. Her eyes were trained on him, venom dripping from her gaze as she watched him dodge nets cast by the GIW below. Never mind that he was _helping _them of course…

"_SAM!"_ She snapped back to the ground as Tucker shoved her full force into the wall of the Nasty Burger, a blood red mosquito the size of a Labrador whizzing past them with a hiss. It turned around to go at Tucker but Sam had found her head again, and raised her wrist steadily. She'd done this before. A quick aim with the squint of an eye – she bent down her middle finger to sharply squeeze the trigger on her inner wrist, and the ghost fizzled and hit the ground at Tucker's feet.

"Damn, girl!" Tucker breathed, but then another two ghosts were descending on them. Sam leveled her arm again and punched out a series of blasts. They all connected but one ghost shook itself off and screeched, sending a laser bright shock of light at the source of its pain. Sam's wrist exploded into agony as her weapon was literally blasted off her skin – the metal band broke and it whipped up her arm, into her shoulder. Everything went white as Sam fell to her knees, clutching her arm to her chest.

Numbly she saw green lights flying past, watched half a dozen blurry red ghosts fall around them, felt Tucker's arms around her waist, heaving her upright. Flashes of white-blue light, the red corpses disappeared. One glance down told her there was blood on her, bright blisters. She looked away, saw white tuxedos aiming at the blur of black in the air. Danny. Danny was there. More red streaks flying towards her, she and Tucker were alone on the sidewalk. But before they reached her the streak of black turned into a luminous face in front of her, two floating orbs of green light like concerned fireflies.

A tingling cool sensation, weightless suddenly, a blur of colors, and she found herself on the dirty tile floor of the Nasty Burger, surrounded by loud panicking people.

"Danny?" she asked the empty air between her and Tucker – he was already gone.

She pushed Tucker away, who was trying to look at her arm, and lurched straight to the window. She could hear the dragonlike ghost screeching, shaking the glass, watched as a blue haze enveloped its skin and sucked it away, like a supernova eaten by a black hole. Her right arm was screaming like grating knives, but strangely she hated the tuxedoed men right now more than the ghost that injured her.

The pricks were _still_ trying to capture Danny, even though he just saved fucking _everyone._

But then, that was always how it went. Wasn't it?

Luckily for the whole town, the agency sucked dick in comparison to Danny when it came to capturing ghosts. Sure they could beat them into submission, sometimes, but nobody had a thermos quite like Danny Phantom's. Nobody knew what Danny did with the ghosts he captured either. Except for Sam, who Danny let in on the secret. ("Bottomless thermos," he had called it with a wry and prideful expression. He took one of the Fentons' weapons, the gun that shot singularity portals to suck ghosts in with one shot, and modified the technology to fit into the bottom of their thermos. Sam called him a genius. He blushed madly and told her it wasn't that difficult.)

_Go! _Sam screamed at him silently. Now that the threat was gone he should leave, in case the GIW stopped sucking and actually captured him. But instead he was flying straight toward her where she was pressed against the glass. His face was suddenly looming an inch from hers, his jaw partially obscured by the giant backwards "N" in the logo on the window. She shook her head at him in alarm, pointing at the men barreling toward the front of the store behind him. But they wouldn't shoot directly at the window, she realized, not with the civilians inside.

_'What are you doing?' _she mouthed through the glass.

"_I'm going to have to pretend I don't know you in public," _he had told her countless times before. _"Don't ever forget that I have enemies."_

But here he was now, staring at her openly - his eyes were wide as saucers, and kept flitting to her arm, where she could feel blood dripping, she could feel her skin alive like fire from the burn.

_'I'M FINE!' _she mouthed, and if she could mouth the sensation of screaming she would.

With one last glance at her arm he dropped straight into the ground, just as the agents swarmed the sidewalk, cursing and casting their heads around wildly. Several took off their heat sensing goggles and threw them to the ground out of frustration – what good were they when your target was flying underground?

Tucker and Sam left the restaurant last, after the anxious crowd had dispersed. The aftermath of ghost attacks in Amity were always short-lived. The novelty of them wore off fast when they happened daily. People got over it quickly, even the most terrified of citizens.

Tucker kept his arm gingerly around Sam's waist, watching her warily as they paused on the sidewalk.

"Ah shit," Sam muttered, stooping to pick up her battered wrist ray. The band was mangled, and while the actual device looked uninjured the trigger was demolished. "My wrist ray!" she keened, picking up the other half of the trigger from the ground.

"_That's_ what you're worried about?" Tucker demanded. "We're getting you to the hospital right now. Have you _looked _at your arm?" he asked incredulously.

"It isn't so bad," Sam whispered, shoving the broken bits of metal into her little black purse.

She thought of Danny rousing her from a sound sleep apologetically at four am just the week before, asking her to bandage a gash on his back. _"I can't reach back there," _he'd told her contritely. The way the wet green of it glistened in the candlelight from her window, the way he tensed and didn't make a sound as she washed and wrapped it. How even when he was hurt he seemed so much more human than ghost. _"You usually do this by yourself?"_ she had asked him. He had offered her a toothy grin. At the time she'd been thinking of the bike accident she'd had freshman year, when a skateboarder had sent her careening into the pavement. A nasty cut on her thigh had cast her into wracking sobs. So small, so insignificant. The scar from it was a faint crescent the size of her finger. While bandaging Danny she had seen a network of white lines, traced a frightening ragged scar that stretched around the left side of his ribcage, seen splayed across his chest what looked frighteningly like a Lichtenburg scar, and felt an intensely foreign emotion surge through her violently.

"It really doesn't hurt that bad," she assured Tucker more vehemently, though her arm's skin was shrieking the opposite.

_"Repeat, target 1-A escaped."_

Sam's eyes were drawn to a couple of agents standing off to the side, huddled together, one talking into a headset.

_"Yes, I repeat. Attempt at capture failed. Contact was lost. Ordering a full regroup."_

She winced in pain as her fists clenched involuntarily. The nerve of them. The stupid GIW agency had suddenly appeared in Amity Park just over a year ago, and now they were so imposing it was almost like a full-time military occupation. Some people didn't mind them, but you'd have to be an idiot not to see that all they did was impede the _real _ghost hunters in their work.

Tucker led her away, repeating the word "hospital" with increasing urgency, ignoring her protests that she was fine. She dimly felt grateful for her best friend, and remembered with a surge that he was deathly terrified of anything related to hospitals. She smiled up at him to let him know that she knew what he was sacrificing as they stumbled towards his car.

And as they walked past an empty white motor scooter with the logo "GIW" printed on the front, Sam gave it a massive shove with the flat end of her boot and sent it crashing to its side.

She heard someone screech "_My scooter!" _as Tucker closed the car door on her, and she rolled down the window to stick out her middle finger as Tucker peeled out of the parking lot.

* * *

I almost forgot to mention! My ideas about the Box Ghost are inspired directly from Cordria's fic titled "Dreams of Light." Basically, it's awesome and you need to read it. Also, the "bottomless thermos" idea is again directly inspired from one of Cordria's one-shots (one of my all-time favorites) called (surprise, surprise) "Bottomless Thermos." It's number 48 in her 'Nova Shots' collection and you should absolutely positively go read it. I just loved the idea so much that it's pretty much canon in my head now.


	5. Chapter 5

** Chapter Five**

x - x - x

"Thought you didn't want to be seen as friends in public," she joked from her bed when he phased through her window that night, accidentally snuffing out her flickering blue candle by drifting through it. "You totally almost blew that earlier."

"Please, like that matters when you're _in danger," _he muttered, descending on her wrapped right arm. "Did they treat this properly? Ectoplasmic burns are different than regular ones and-"

Sam tugged her arm out of his grasp, though the action sent a stab of pain through her shoulder. "I'm fine, Danny. Relax. Don't be such a mother hen."

"Don't tell me what to do," he replied scathingly and stuck out his tongue, grabbing for her arm again. "Give it."

"God it's like you're three years old sometimes."

He laughed as Sam reluctantly allowed him to inspect the wrappings. "Well I guess you could say I _am _three_, _in one respect." His eyes shot up fast as he realized what he'd said. She hadn't been certain what he'd meant, but the look on his face condemned him. For someone so secretive, he was actually pretty bad at keeping secrets.

"So... you died three years ago?" she supposed conversationally, as though he hadn't just told her something he'd been trying to avoid telling her.

He didn't answer.

You weren't supposed to ask a ghost how they died. It was unfathomably rude. And Danny had made it abundantly clear that he would not be sharing that piece of information any time soon. But she was _so exceedingly curious. _

_How did you die? When did you die? Where? Why?_ She couldn't ask him anything she wanted to about it. And yet somehow, the question bubbled up out of her mouth before she'd actually thought it through. "Did it hurt?"_  
_

His hands froze on her wrist, and he slowly drew them away. There was a long pause and Sam was about to apologize, when Danny looked at her curiously and said, "Yes. Funny.. no one's ever asked that before."

No one ever cared, his face said. "Will you.. tell me?" she said quietly.

He peered at her sideways through his flyway strands of hair, as if sizing up his response. "You won't like it." When Sam didn't answer, he sighed. It was funny, that quirk of his. Sam had never seen other ghosts breathe at all, let alone sigh. "If you have to know, I was electrocuted. I think. Felt like someone was threading barbed wire through my veins. Like uh.. lava and ice, all at once. I don't know how long it lasted but when it was over I felt like it'd been a thousand years. Not exaggerating.. it's something you wouldn't understand unless you've died. I didn't even know pain like that existed. I've never felt anything like it since."

He paused when he saw the look of horror on Sam's face. She was resisting a shudder. Resisting the jarring mental image of Danny's wide eyes, his hair static shocked, a painful Lichtenburg scar searing up along his chest… God, she'd seen the scar, she'd seen it.

She opened her mouth to speak but Danny cut her off. "If you're about to apologize, don't. There's no need." And with that he began inspecting her bandages again ruthlessly, like he deeply distrusted the work of any regular doctor. "You'd better feel damn special," he added.

"What, why?"

He grinned at her stupidly. "I've never told anyone about that before."

Her own grin took on a sneakier appearance. "I'll make sure and write all about it in my diary."

"Good. It better be nice and dramatic."

Sam snorted. She wasn't even sure whether it was her or Danny that had lightened the mood again.

Meanwhile, Danny had stopped looking over the bandage and was just grimacing at it. "Does it hurt?" he asked after a moment.

"No," she said to quickly, but when he glared up at her she changed her answer to, "maybe a little."

"…Can I try something?"

"…Yeah, I guess."

"Where's the actual burn at?" he asked, and she pointed to the space surrounding her wrist. The rest of it was just cuts. "Don't get angry," he warned. "I'll wrap it up good as new, I promise." And with that he phased off the lower half of her bandages with a single stroke. She hissed sharply as the fresh air stung the sweltering burn wrapping around her wrist.

"_Ow,"_ she breathed, despite herself, and clenched her jaw. "_Ow_, you prick, put them back…"

"It's okay," he whispered. He settled down in the space next to her tentatively, sparing her a wary glance. Always, the closer he got to her the more on edge he seemed to get, as if at any moment she were about to renounce their friendship and inform him of her hatred for ghosts. But she couldn't spare the effort to reassure him right now, focusing on the dull ache sparking across her skin.

He pulled off his white gloves and tossed them to the end of the bed. As he slowly lowered his hands down onto her wrist and wrapped them around, she felt an intense relief, a pressing coolness against the fire. She felt him breathe a quiet cool breath against her blistered skin, like a snowy drift. She let out a sigh, relishing the dulling of the pain.

"Better?" he asked.

"Much better," she cooed. "Don't stop doing that."

"I won't," he assured her, with more than a hint of amusement in his voice.

"Good," she said, closing her eyes in a sudden rush of embarrassment. She had noticed his cheeks glowing faintly green again, and she was grateful that her own blood wasn't ectoplasm too because she was sure her face would have been lit up like a Christmas tree.

. . . . .

It took almost three weeks to work up the courage to do what had to be done. Every morning she would stare at the broken mess of metal on her desk, glaring at it like it was all that piece of junk's fault.

Tucker told her whenever she mentioned it that she was stupid, and to just "Buy another one for Christ's sake, your family is _rich!"_

But it wasn't about the money. Sam had a strict no bullshit policy about throwing away electronics. Most people didn't realize how many perfectly functional pieces of technology were rotting away in landfills, polluting the Earth, simply because people were too lazy to fix them and just bought a new one, or an upgrade. She never, ever, discarded things unless they were irreparable.

So as much as Sam _wanted _to, she couldn't. And that meant going to the only people who could repair a Fenton product in this city.

Her phone buzzed in her back pocket and she didn't have to check the name to know it was from Tucker.

_Let me know how it goes._

Breathing deeply, she knocked on the front door and waited.

She was two seconds from sprinting away in retreat when it swung inward and her mouth glued itself shut.

Danny Fenton stood there barefoot in his pajamas, his dark hair sticking up at every angle. As always she bit back the thoughts that sparked without her permission when she saw him. How he seemed to have gone off and grown up somewhere without telling her. He went completely slack-jawed for a moment. "_Sam?"_ he asked, as though she were a ghost. "What uh.. what are you doing here?" he added feebly, his eyes looking anywhere but into her eyes, as though he were trying desperately not to be rude.

And failing, at that. She couldn't say that sentence didn't hurt.

"Relax, Fenton," she said coldly, and only realized belatedly that she called him that aloud (because that's how she had to think of him in her mind now – there just wasn't room for two Dannys) and almost wished she could eat her words when the hurt was evident on his face, but the key word was _almost. _"I'm here to see your mom, about one of her inventions."

"_Oh_," he said, and for some reason he did seem to relax. "Oh, okay. Come in," he said, standing aside.

Sam tried not to spare him a glance as she stalked toward the kitchen.

"I'll get her from the lab," he announced quietly as Sam sat at one of the bar stools by the countertop.

He disappeared down the steps into the basement laboratory that Sam had only ever seen a handful of times. An urge rose, to look around the downstairs and soak everything in, but she stamped it out like a stray campfire spark. Could it really be more than two years since she was last here? She wondered idly if Danny Fenton's room still looked the same, was still covered in NASA posters… _Stamp_. _Stop that._

He cleared his throat at the top of the stairs. "She said she'll just be a moment."

Sam nodded and removed the parts of the wrist ray from her purse, setting them out on the counter.

"You uh.. you want something to drink? Or… something?"

Sam looked up incredulously. His face was carefully blank and he hung by the refrigerator, still refusing to meet her eyes. "What are you trying to prove, Danny?" she spat, before she could stop herself.

He blinked at her, but looked more resigned than shocked at her outburst.

"_Stop," _she breathed, "just stop, okay! Don't give me that hurt puppy look. I tried _so hard _with you, so don't look at me like _I'm _the one that screwed it all up. I will never, for the life of me, understand you. Why you always just act all nice to me, like nothing ever happened. Don't. Just don't. I'm through with you fucking with my head, got it?"

_Well that was not what I meant to say. _

Sam kicked herself mentally, repeatedly. She thought she was _over _all of this! She expected him to explode at her, to look angry, to argue, to anything.

But he just stared at her for a moment, a moment so long she thought she might scream. And then he just nodded soberly a few times, looking down at his shoes. "Yeah, I get it, Sam. Really, I do. I wish I could make you understand how sorry I am for everything."

And before she could form a coherent response he turned heel and retreated up the stairs in the hallway.

At least she had the time to settle her angry shaking hands before Maddie traipsed up the steps.

"Sam!" she called warmly, crossing the room in an instant and enveloped her in a tight embrace. If she had heard Sam yelling at Danny, she didn't give any hint. "It has been way too long since I've seen you, dear."

Sam gave her a smile, but it was strained. They both knew the reason why Sam wasn't around, and it started with a capital D.

As Sam described what had happened to her wrist ray, Maddie's eyes lit up with a sort of fierce pride. "That's my girl!" she exclaimed, when Sam explained she was blasting a ghost with it.

Sam's heart actually physically ached. There had been a time when Maddie was like a mother to her, in a way that Sam's own mother never had been. Jack too, in a funny kind of fatherly way. Although she was sorely glad that Jack wasn't at home right now. He'd always been the one to make subtle lovebird jokes about Danny and Sam, and he just hadn't understood when Danny let the friendship fall apart. Those last few months of freshman year, when Sam and Tucker had been trying so hard to pull Danny out of his funk, Jack just kept making those jokes. Like he thought maybe it would jog Danny into remembering how much he cared. It must not have worked. But Sam didn't think she could handle one of those jokes right now, no matter how well-meaning Jack's heart was.

The truth was it was almost as painful just being inside the Fenton household as it was speaking to Danny. It reminded her of the family that she had once clicked into so perfectly. A misshapen puzzle piece that never could fit into her own family's rigid lines, she had molded so easily into the Fentons' chaotic world.

But Danny had pushed her out. He'd pushed everyone out of his life.

Maddie poked around with tools, and left at one point to get some spare parts from the lab. She would have absolutely paid Maddie for the repair job, but Sam knew the woman well enough to know that offering that would only offend her. _"You're family,"_ Maddie had said to her once, near the end of her freshman year. Maddie knew what was happening to the friendship at that point. No one knew what to do about Danny. "_Always, no matter what, okay? You come to us if you ever need anything at all."_

"We've really missed your presence around here, Sam," Maddie sighed, absently screwing in a minuscule loose nut.

Sam's lips pressed into a thin hard line. If she said _"I missed you guys too"_ then she'd be abandoning the careful lies she had constructed around herself, preserving her sanity.

"I never got the chance to apologize," she went on, her strawberry-brown hair obscuring her face as she worked intently on the project.

"What for?"

"For the way my son treated you," she sighed. "You and Tucker were the best friends Danny ever had. Jack and I adored you kids. I… I just wish I knew what happened. What happened to Danny." Sam noticed she was clenching the screw driver in her hands, like it might try to slip away any moment.

It wasn't ever the way Danny treated them, not really. It was the way he _didn't. _It all started after his 'accident' in the lab, which the Fentons had never elaborated on. At first it might have been attributed to that, maybe some sort of shock or post-traumatic stress, but the way it went on.. it didn't make any sense. The way he stopped showing up to movie night. Stopped meeting them when he said he would. Pretended to be sick so he wouldn't have to come out of his room. He was never mean, never said anything cruel. That's why it hurt so badly. He was the _same Danny_. And yet he slowly pushed everyone out of his life, even his own family.

It had been hard enough for Sam and Tucker, but she couldn't even imagine how hard it must have been for Maddie and Jack, and Jazz too for that matter. Watching your son slowly close himself off from the world, without knowing why. Waking up in the dead of night to find that he's gone, again. Seeing him come home with cuts and bruises he's never able to explain. Learning from the school that he's ditching class, that some days he doesn't show up to school at all. Sam and Tucker tried reasoning out the ditching problem as a fear of the paranormal, since it happened whenever there was an attack. She'd seen him run away from ghosts enough times to back that up. But it didn't fit with everything else, so it was probably just another excuse. It must have been torture for the Fentons. It must _still _be torture.

And it was torture for Sam to nod and accept Maddie's apology, gently folding herself into a hug that she knew the mother desperately needed.

As she was walking numbly home, her phone buzzed with another text.

_You still over there?_

She ignored it.

When she got to her front door it buzzed again.

_Call me later, k?_

Oh how she wanted to call Tucker. She wanted to scream and sob and rant, and she wanted to talk to Tucker more than anyone about it. Because Tucker understood. He understood and he had been there. But Tucker didn't deserve that. He deserved to not be reminded about it. Sam saw Tucker's face whenever Danny Fenton's name was mentioned, the way he hunched over on himself like he wanted to disappear. Danny Fenton could rot in hell for doing that to Tucker, who was the best friend in the entire world and one that Fenton never deserved.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

x - x - x

Sam sat on the edge of her bed for a long time. She didn't pay attention to how long; when she got home from Fentonworks it was about 5:00pm. Her arms wrapped tightly around her waist and she concentrated very hard on thinking about nothing at all. Meditation was good, it helped her cleanse. By the time Danny showed up two whole candles had burned to the root signalling out to him from the nook of her window. It was black outside.

She felt it when he came in, though her eyes were closed at the moment. It was a subtle shift she'd learned to look out for over time, a sudden drop in temperature by a degree or two, the tiniest sound of a breeze in her otherwise stuffy room. And she thought, _You're okay. You're fine. You meditated, you're good, you're under control, you've got this. Just open your eyes._

And she opened them, and saw Danny standing there, unmasked concern on his face.

And her tiny wall crumbled, and she felt the beginnings of a tear well up in her eye. _Oh no, you are _not_ gonna cry! _she reprimanded herself sharply. _Tough shit, get over it!_ She stood abruptly, her arms still wrapped around her waist, as if keeping them there could keep her from breaking down utterly.

Danny ruined whatever pretense she had left when he asked, "Sam, what's wrong?"

Her head hung forward, so she could hide the tear that slid out without her permission. But he definitely heard the strangled sob that followed it. She felt the familiar coolness radiating from him as he swooped forward, but kept her eyes on the buckles adorning his white boots. She didn't want him to see her crying. Danny Phantom, the strong. The hero.

_Her_ hero.

She didn't want him to see her crying.

"Sam, tell me what's wrong," he whispered, hovering just in front of her, not too close. Even now, after being friends for nearly four months he still acted like he was afraid of her. Or maybe he thought she was afraid of him. Like at any moment she was going to bolt if he did the wrong thing.

She blinked, and several more tears pulled free. _Let them do whatever they want,_ she thought.

"Sam…"

She let her forehead close the gap between them all at once, resting it against the smooth black fabric over his chest as another sob broke. His chest stopped mid-breath, but she really didn't care if he was uncomfortable with it. She wanted a friend to cry on, for once in her life.

"Hey.. hey shh," he said softly, but she just pulled her arms tighter about herself and cried, letting some of her weight lean against him.

He rested his hands first tentatively on her shoulders, and then draped one arm across them while his other hand snuck up to rest in her hair. "It's okay," he murmured, his chin against the top of her head.

For the life of her, Sam couldn't understand why this made her cry harder. "It's n-not okay," she gasped against the brilliant white DP decorating his chest. "It's not."

"What happened, Sam?"

And then, everything was spilling out of her all at once. Everything she thought she was over, that she had buried in a grave and stepped over long ago.

"My b-best friend, that's wha – at happened," she sobbed. "He's the sa – ame as he e – _ever_ was! He's just the s-same s-so how can he be so _different_? How can he act so n-nice to me when _he's _the one who ended it?

"I just wanna know what ha – appened to him. We tried so hard to be th-there for him. We thought of everyth-thing possible but everything s-seemed so silly. It wasn't _gangs _or _dr- rugs._ None of i- it was _him. _It c-couldn't have been. But he sti –ill just – faded away. Why would someone not wa – ant any friends?" she asked desperately. "And the worst thing of a – _all, _is that I used to think I w-was in _love _with him." She gritted her teeth, trying and failing to calm her breathing.

"I feel like we _failed him," _she whispered hoarsely into Danny's shirt. "I'm a terrible f-friend. God, I le – et d-down my _best friend."_

She lapsed back into wordless crying as Danny passed one hand soothingly over her hair.

"Shh, Sam," he whispered, and this time instead of making her cry it calmed her, if only just a little.

She suddenly felt a wave of self-consciousness overwhelm her. Sam, the fierce, was _not _crying like a little girl! She tried to stifle the tears, but a few more really wanted to gain their freedom.

Danny's hands were on her shoulders, pushing her away from his chest, and his eyes peaked down at her through her tear-streaked bangs. "Hey, listen to me Sam."

She sniffled but quieted her heaving breaths, struck by the intensity in his gaze.

"I'm not very good at the whole 'comfort' thing. You know I'm out of practice at having friends. But listen." He straightened up so he didn't have to crouch down, and forced Sam's chin up from its dejected position. "None of that stuff could possibly be your fault."

She was about to object when he shook his head.

"Don't argue. You're not responsible for someone else's decisions, you hear me? I'm deeply sorry that you lost a friendship that meant so much to you. I can empathize whole-heartedly, because I had friends too, before I died.

"But you can't beat yourself up over the choices someone else made for themselves. There's absolutely nothing you could have done. You probably went above and beyond as it was."

Sam's breath continued to hitch in her chest as she forced her crying to subside. She tried to wipe the tears from her face with the back of her hand, but her whole face was wet.

"Here, let me," he said gently, and snaked his hand up onto the side of her head in her hair. That cool tingly feeling spread from his fingertips without warning, and she realized belatedly that he'd just turned her intangible for a moment. With a bit of a shock, she felt her perfectly dry face. At the utter insanity of it, she actually let out a small laugh.

Danny's infectious grin lit up like a flare at that. "Now, that's better," he hummed.

"Nice party trick," she joked weakly, trying to focus on not lapsing back into tears.

"Glad you liked it," he said, and then he suddenly let his arms fall away as if she'd burned him. "For whatever it's worth," he added, floating a step backwards, "_I_ think you do the 'friend' thing pretty well. You're the best one I've ever had at least."

She actually smiled at that. "Thanks, Danny. You're not so bad yourself," she added drolly.

He didn't even retort sarcastically for once. Instead, his head perked to the side as if struck by a sudden thought. His emerald eyes bored into her. "Hey, can I do something to cheer you up?"

"Probably not," she sighed, her grin slipping. She didn't think there was anything that could lift this dark mood.

He took her hand slyly, baring his teeth at her. "I wasn't asking for a suggestion, I was asking permission."

She quirked an eyebrow attentively. "Permission to what?"

She didn't have time to register anything before he had scooped her up into his arms unceremoniously and rocketed into the air. She let out a shriek instinctively, but they had already cleared her roof and were soaring well above the wealthy district of Amity Park.

"I did _not_ say yes!" she shouted over the sound of the crisp wind in her ears. Her black hair was whipping about her face. The faint smell of soon-to-be-rain was on the breeze. She clutched at the fluttering collar of Danny's suit, feeling the all-too-familiar tug of gravity pulling at her. The buildings and streets stretched and loomed endlessly, dizzyingly below them. Yes, he had been right on that first night in late September, so many months ago. Being carried was _so _much different than flying. The sight of her legs dangling freely against a mile's drop in his other arm was enough to make her heart stop. She wasn't even wearing shoes for Christ's sake!

And then, when she looked up at his bright face her heartbeat suddenly slammed back into full throttle.

"Where are we going?" she called out to him, and he seemed to have no trouble hearing her over the racing wind.

"You'll see," he assured her, and like a splash of cool water they turned intangible and soared up into a roiling dark cloud.

Sam had never been inside a cloud before, that much was for sure. As if in a dissociated dream, she watched the drifting moisture pass _through _their bodies – the only visible light was a small ball of churning ectoplasm that Danny was holding out with the arm supporting her legs. She felt like they were swimming through a murky oblivion in the depths of the sea, following the illusive light of an Angler fish.

When at last they emerged, Sam let out an audible gasp.

"Yeah, I know," Danny hummed.

Directly below them, the churning storm clouds really did look like the foggy depths of the drop off, deep beneath the waves, beyond some coral reef. The midnight lights of downtown Amity Park lit them quite faintly, so that it seemed there was some sort of Atlantis hidden far below. Only hinted by a dull yellow glow peaking up through the thick gray. The gray waves spread out perpetually, rolling out toward the horizon and spilling off the edge of the earth. At the horizon, a different world began and spread out above them, capsuling them in a Milky Way snow globe. Shimmering dust littered the black roof, the wide arm of the galaxy stretching out across infinity. Against the northern horizon the moon hung low, only the faintest sliver of light betraying that it was truly there.

Sam had never seen this many stars over Amity Park before in her life. She didn't think that anyone possibly could have.

Her jaw fell open, and for the first time in her life, she was well and truly speechless.

"I remember the first time I discovered it," Danny whispered, as though talking too loudly might disrupt the snow globe and send them reeling in a flurry of snowflakes. "That really cloudy nights cover up the light pollution from the city. Without all the lights, you get… all this. It was the first time I didn't feel angry that I'd become a ghost."

He gently let go of her legs and grabbed her hand tightly, and she felt the familiar weightlessness finally surge through her as he transferred energy, and all the gravity vanished from Sam's reality. She knew they were still well within the atmosphere, but they might as well have been in outer space.

Slowly she drifted down and leveled with him, but she couldn't quite bring herself to look at him. She was still soaking in the utopia.

He gently pulled on her hand and she finally glanced up at him, saw the way his eyes danced. It was clear he could tell how much this meant to her. "Wanna go for a walk?" he asked casually, and began to step forward onto the hazy non-surface on the misty cloud below them.

She felt absurd as she took a 'step' toward him. She couldn't feel gravity, she couldn't feel anything but his hand and the wind passing her by. But for some reason she took immense pleasure in it. For all she knew, she was the first human being to walk atop a cloud.

For some reason, the thought surfaced that Danny had been so adamant about not being seen in public together. For her safety, he would always say. _But who's gonna see us up here?_

And for some other reason, as they walked weightlessly along, following the galaxy's arm in the sky, Sam's eyes kept flitting from the mesmerizing view back towards Danny.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

x - x - x

When Sam thought she couldn't hate the GIW any more than she already did, she should have been prepared to eat her words.

As harsh and brittle January waned, it seemed there was never a ghost attack these days where they didn't show up to muck up everything. Even at the school, where they were never allowed to interfere before, there was a temporary squad on constant patrol. Basically they traipsed around fucking shit up majorly for Danny, who was trying his best to capture the stray ghosts without getting captured himself. It was becoming exceedingly difficult. The agency used to put an equal amount of effort into capturing all ghosts, but now it seemed that whenever Danny was there the other ghosts were completely forgotten. She desperately wondered _why_ they were suddenly so hell-bent on capturing him.

Sam watched from classroom windows, from the halls, from atop the tables in the cafeteria, she always stopped and watched whenever Danny showed up in her corner of the school to fight ghosts. Because he always did show up, even though he knew the GIW would be there, trying to capture him. He could just let the GIW do their jobs, but they never did it as thoroughly as Danny. Nobody could. So to keep hunting ghosts he voluntarily ran the risk of getting caught. And Sam would be lying if she said that possibility, however remote, didn't scare the hell out of her.

So, she watched. She couldn't help it. It was for the sake of her sanity, to know he was okay.

She didn't care that the other students considered her a Phantom worshipper now. That they thought she was crazy for following after the battling ghosts instead of running away from the action. Once Paulina Sanchez stopped her in a hallway and said "You can give up on that dream, Manson. Danny Phantom is _mine." _Sam had laughed heartily in her face before walking off.

Even Tucker started to poke fun, in his own brotherly way. Tucker wasn't blind, he could see straight through Sam's stammered excuses. It was clear Tucker thought she'd developed some star-struck crush on Phantom. Sam was beginning to think it would be time soon to tell Tucker that she had a secret second best friend. The guilt of keeping such a massive secret from him ate away at her sometimes, but in all truth was out of respect for Danny. He'd said he wanted to keep it a secret, so she'd kept it a secret. Even from Tucker.

It also ate away at her to see Danny coming into her room at all hours of the night, worked up into a frenzy over the latest blunders of the stupid GIW. As if the perils of ghost hunting weren't already enough, this added another level of danger to it. To Sam's dismay, he began to come to her with injuries more frequently. She became far more skilled at treating wounds than she ever would have liked.

Somewhere in the last few months their couple-nights-a-week thing had devolved into a nearly-every-night thing. It used to be just fine with her when he was too busy to drop in and visit some nights, but now with the GIW going after him with such vigor, she found that on the nights he didn't show that her anxiety hung so heavy that she couldn't focus on anything, let alone sleep. She couldn't help the pervasive haunting image of Danny trapped in one of their nets, of Danny strapped down on a table in some sterile underground lab. She would think of the frog she was forced to dissect in biology and feel bile rising in her throat.

One night Sam was laying on her stomach on her fluffy purple comforter, trying to concentrate on her English assignment, when Danny floated through the wall with murder in his eyes.

She could tell something very bad had happened.

She'd only seen him truly angry a handful of times. Mostly he was just frustrated, or annoyed, or exasperated. Seeing Danny Phantom in full anger mode was something that might have scared your average citizen. But it intrigued Sam. It reminded her how human Danny's emotions were, how much more human he seemed than ghostly. That he could touch on every part of the spectrum of emotion, and not just one level like so many other ghosts.

Tonight, his neon eyes were blazing in his head. They were always the most outspoken feature on him, but right now they could have outshone a lighthouse. Sam immediately sat up on his arrival, sensing his mood. He began by throwing his thermos heavily at the side of the bed, where it bounced and hit the ground and began rolling away slowly.

Sam moved to the edge of the bed, waiting for him to speak up. It was usually best to just let him rant about whatever the GIW had done that day, because after he did that he usually perked right up.

"They've gone too far," he muttered darkly, catching the rolling thermos with the toe of his boot.

"What did they do?" Sam asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer.

Danny didn't seem to have heard her. "I should have realized something was off.. never went this long without fighting him before. Nothing could ever keep him away, no matter how many times I tried... I should have _known_."

"Keep who away?"

Danny's fiery eyes met hers for a moment and he finally seemed to hear her. "The Box Ghost," he answered. "No matter how many times I throw him back in the Ghost Zone he always finds a way back in less than three days. I should have known. It's been weeks and _weeks _since I last fought him."

Sam dimly sought through her memories, and couldn't remember the last time she had seen the usually conspicuous ghost. "What happened to him?" she wondered.

"The Guys in White captured him," Danny growled.

Sam paled. Every terrifying image she'd ever had of the GIW experimenting on Danny was instantly juxtaposed on the Box Ghost. While he was annoying, he was always fairly innocent, a harmless threat. She didn't want to ask what they did, but Danny answered anyway.

"They only captured him to get at me." Sam could practically hear the self-loathing dripping in his voice, and she wanted to slap it out of him. "They just wanted information, about _me_."

"How do you know all this?" Sam asked cautiously.

"Because I found him," he said bluntly. "They let him go. Apparently they got what they wanted, or else didn't think they were going to get it. He was all but completely torn apart. He could barely form words, but he told me they took him… I just, I put him back in the Ghost Zone. He'll accumulate energy and heal much faster there than he would here...

"He didn't deserve this," Danny barked loudly, and Sam was grateful her parents were sleeping on the other side of the house. "No one deserves that, no matter what they've done. It's _cruel _and _unusual, _but of course the Constitution doesn't protect people who aren't considered _people._"

"Danny…" she wasn't sure what to say. How would you comfort someone about something like this?

"Those bastards," he growled, kicking the thermos away violently. "Seriously, who the hell do they think they are? Why do they get to make the rules?" His fists clenched as he paced her room and flickers of ectoplasm swirled around them. "How can they look at a creature that's so obviously sentient and classify it otherwise? I feel like I'm living under the fucking Nazi regime. This is my honest to God _worst nightmare_.

"They're never going to give up," he despaired, and stopped pacing momentarily, his eyes oddly glazed as he looked at Sam's window at the streetlamps below. "They're just going to keep coming after me until they have me. And who could blame them? I mean look at me! I am a _ghost_. All people ever see is a ghost. All I am is a ball of ectoplasm. I'm a _Class 8 Spectral Entity. _I'm _Target A-1. _I'm fucking nothing to them! Do you understand what's going to happen to me if they actually catch me?"

Sam blinked numbly at him, assuming it was a rhetorical question. She was watching his eyes and hands blaze trails of green against her dim room as he stalked back and forth. It was so strange watching him pace. He was always floating around, defying gravity just for the sake of it. It was almost scary to see him so grounded. With a start Sam realized what was so human about his emotions - he was feeling many of them at once. He wasn't just angry, he was confused and lost and he was _scared._

Suddenly, without warning, he sank to his knees. "I just don't know what to do anymore, Sam. I don't know if I can keep this up," he whispered. "Sometimes I wonder what _will _happen when they catch me." He fell into a hoarse whisper. "_When they cut me open_. If we'll all find out that I really am just a ball of ectoplasm, just a _Class 8 Spectral-_" his breath caught in his throat, and Sam had had enough, and she said so.

"Enough," she snapped sharply, causing him to abruptly look up. "Danny, come sit over here."

Something like annoyance flashed in his eyes, so she patted the space next to her gingerly, giving him a smile.

Warily, he floated up and settled next to her on the bed, giving her an odd look. "What?" he snapped back. God, he always got so testy if she interrupted his GIW ranting. She forced down any annoyance she felt at his tone.

"Danny," she said, more softly this time, and the green in his eyes softened a bit as well in response. Her heart fluttered inexplicably.

She picked up his hand from its place on the bed and tentatively removed the tough white glove. He was looking at her curiously but she focused on his hand.

"The first time you asked me to bandage you up," she said quietly, "I noticed it. I was wrapping this hand right here, and I saw that you had fingerprints."

Sam pulled his hand close to her face, and sure enough she could see the faint swirling spirals on the tips of his fingers. She flashed him a smile and saw that he was staring at her and not his hand. Her eyes flickered back downward, her thumb tracing along the thin scar crossing his callused palm.

"You have a little scar right here," she noted, "from the cut you got that day. And here.. there's bit of a callus here. Probably from all the manual labor you do," she joked. She looked up and saw that he was still looking at her like she was speaking a foreign language, and not at his hand like she'd hoped. Was he not grasping her point?

She let his arm rest on her lap but didn't let his hand out of her hands. She wasn't done with this metaphor yet.

"I was reading this book about the history of the paranormal in Amity Park, and they had this whole section on ghostly manifestations. You know, the way ghosts present themselves. It's supposed to be a subconscious choice. They fashion themselves after their obsession in a sense. But the one thing it said was that ghosts' appearances were skin deep. Like if you take off their hat, there's just going to be a glob of ectoplasm underneath. Or of you look at a cross-section of them, you won't find bones or anything you'd expect. Just ectoplasm. They only need to fake their outer appearances."

She could tell from Danny's expression that he was getting lost, so she came in for the homestretch. "What I'm saying, Danny, is that obviously people are _wrong about ghosts. _About everything they think they know about ghosts. Look at you, if you only went skin deep then I would have found pure ectoplasm under your glove. There wouldn't be scars here, hidden where nobody could see them. There wouldn't be _fingerprints."_

She stopped idly tracing the scar on his palm to steal a glance at him. He still wasn't looking at his hand. Just her. And he had the oddest expression on his face.

"Do you understand, Danny?" she whispered fiercely. "Don't _ever _say to me again that you're 'just a ball of ectoplasm' or I'm gonna have to kick your ass, alright? You're _so much_ more than that, and you know it."

She was suddenly struck by how distracting the glow of his eyes was, and for some reason she tried for a moment to envision his face without it. It was fairly impossible. The hazy candle-like glow coming off his skin blurred his features, almost like she was trying to look at him through thick fog. Without knowing why, she was hit with a desperate wish to see his face, without the glow and without the glowing eyes – she just wanted to know what he looked like, to truly see him.

"Sometimes I wish I could see your face more clearly," she breathed, though she didn't know if he would even know what she meant. Sam wasn't even sure _she_ knew what she meant.

All she knew was that now she was seeing his _eyes_ much more clearly.. in fact they were just a few inches from her, blinking curiously, and she could see the pattern in his irises, the way the ectoplasm rippled outward like liquid fire from his pupils. She was so paralyzed by them that she didn't actually realize what Danny was doing until he was already doing it.

The green light was suddenly gone; his eyes had closed. The fingers of his hand curled around hers, and his nose was gently nudging against the side of her nose.

He lingered there for a long moment, his forehead pressed lightly against hers, his messy hair spilling over and mixing with her hair, his frosty breath coating her whole face. She felt her own breath hitch and her lips part slightly in surprise as she finally, _finally _understood what he was doing. His lips pressed against her parted ones so softly that it might have been the brush of a snowflake for all she knew.

Everything stopped, including her thoughts.

Then the cold was gone, and she opened her eyes as her brain functions rebooted slowly.

His blazing half-lidded eyes were staring down at his hands, looking weary. "I'm sorry," he muttered.

That brought her speech back. "Why?" she managed to say.

He closed his eyes instead of looking at her. "I shouldn't have done that."

"Or… maybe you should do it again," she murmured, faintly wondering who on earth was saying those words.

He blinked at her, the smallest of smiles gracing his face, before reaching his free hand up and touching her softly on the rim of her jaw. She could actually feel his smile when he kissed her again, and this time she had the wits about her to actually kiss him back. It was like pressing a kiss into a solid slow breeze. Fingers snaked into her hair and his lips continually lifted and came back again delicately, tracing her mouth softly, like he was afraid he might shatter her.

When his thumb brushed her cheekbone she sighed, and he pulled back. "Sam," he whispered, and she was surprised to see that his frown was back, even more pronounced. "We can't do this."

Her heart, which had been racing, plunged to the bottom of her stomach. "What are you saying?"

His eyebrows scrunched, like he was in pain. "Sam… I'm a _ghost."_

_"So?" _Her fingers, which still clutched his ungloved hand, dug into his skin. It was solid and real, and didn't feel like a ghost to her.

Despite his misgivings his hand still hadn't left her face. He seemed to have forgotten that his thumb was still tracing the edge of her cheek. "What do you mean _so?" _he asked. "I'm _dead_, Sam. Doesn't that _bother _you?"

"No," she said flatly, and it was true. She couldn't believe what he was saying. She was clutching his hand and wrist so tightly she worried faintly that she was hurting him. "Do I need to show you your fingerprints again?" she asked sarcastically.

He looked dismayed. "This isn't about…"

"Yes it is," she interrupted. "This is about you thinking you're less than you are. Look at me, Danny. It isn't _about _what you are, don't you get it? It's about _who _you are! Maybe you're dead, but you're alive to me. You're sitting right here, I'm touching you, we're having a conversation. Isn't that enough?" When he didn't answer, she swallowed and said, "It's enough for me."

He sighed softly, and the defeated look on his face pained her more than she could say. So, without really thinking, she leaned forward and kissed him for a third time. She fully expected him to pull away. But he didn't. Instead he melted against her like a flood, and there was nothing delicate about it.

She wasn't aware of much else besides the feel of his breath on hers, a warm front and a cold front meeting like a storm, but dimly under it all she could feel her hands still clutching his hand and wrist tightly, felt the impossible faint throb of a steady beat against her fingertips, beating to a different rhythm than her own heart.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

x - x - x

It was a windy night in mid-February that Sam began to think that Danny was hiding something from her.

The air blew past her window sporadically, a low whistling sound escaping into the tiny crack. Other than that, the only other sound was the rustling of pages as Sam slowly turned them. She was leaning back against Danny's chest at the headboard of her bed, and her body rose and fell as he breathed. Glancing up at him, she saw that he was staring into space with a look of worried concentration.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked lightly, letting the open book rest against her chest.

Usually he snapped back into focus when she interrupted his space-outs, but he just kept staring, his eyebrows furrowed. "Nothing."

"Don't nothing me, what's wrong?"

He glanced down at her and his gaze softened, one hand reaching up to push her hair out of her face. "Nothing's wrong," he assured her. "I'm just a little worried is all."

"About what?"

"Just.. the Guys in White. The Box Ghost. I don't know."

"The Box Ghost? I thought you said he would heal up fine in the Ghost Zone."

His eyebrows creased further. "He will," he agreed. "I was just thinking about what he said when I found him there in the alley. He couldn't really say much…" His eyes glazed over, and Sam tried not to think about what the ghost had looked like when Danny found him. "But I heard the words "guys in white" and "captured." And he just kept repeating "I'm sorry" over and over… and.. the Box Ghost _never _apologizes."

He ran one hand raggedly through his hair, letting it fall into his face. "And the GIW haven't dogged me at all since I found the Box Ghost."

Sam's face lit up. No wonder Danny hadn't been complaining about them lately. They'd been leaving him alone? "Well that's great, isn't it?" she asked hopefully.

He grimaced at her. "I don't know. It isn't like them. Why would they stop suddenly, for no reason? It makes me think.. that the Box Ghost told them something. Something about me. I can't think of any other reason why… but it just doesn't make sense…"

A trickle of curiosity wormed its way into Sam's worry. "What could he have told them?" she asked quietly. What could any ghost possibly have to say to the GIW that could help them capture him? And what could a ghost have to say that could cause them to _stop _trying to capture him?

Danny looked away from her quickly. "I.. I don't know," answered. "I don't know what he could have said. But I feel like he _did _say something. I feel like I'm in the eye of the storm, and as soon as the GIW get back on my tail again I'm going to have a lot to deal with."

Sam watched him curiously, and couldn't help the nagging feeling that Danny _did _have some idea what the ghost could have said to them. But.. why wouldn't he tell her?

"Hey," she said softly, setting her book aside. "Stop worrying so much. You're going to give yourself worry wrinkles," she told him, crinkling her nose as if the thought repulsed her.

He rolled his eyes at her. "Ghosts don't wrinkle, stupid."

"Well then you're going to give _me _wrinkles, for making _me _worry so much."

"Aw, you worry about me? That's cute," he said, overloading his tone with baby-voice and rubbing his face into her hair.

"Of course I worry, idiot," she grumbled, trying to pull away. He was making her hair all frizzy. "Stop it!" she commanded, but he wrapped his arms around her waist when she tried to sit up.

"Don't wanna," he mumbled, pressing a kiss onto the top of her head.

"God it's like I'm dating a preschooler," she grumbled, crossing her arms.

He froze at that. "_Are _we dating?" he said into her hair.

Sam's brain screeched to a halt, and she found herself rapidly back-pedaling.

Neither of them had spoken a word to the other about the change that had happened in their relationship since that night in January. It just happened.. and kept happening. Words turned to kisses so naturally that they both seemed unwilling to break the spell by trying to give what they had a name. They just enjoyed it.

But Sam had just broken it, by accident. And now his words hung in the air: _Are _we dating? ….Could she even _date _a ghost?

"I…" Words failed her. "I dunno.. Are we?"

She pulled away and looked at him uncertainly, and to her surprise he broke into laughter.

"I guess we are," he hummed, pulling her back against his chest. "I wonder what your _parents_ would say," he trilled wickedly.

Sam blanched at the thought. "I think they would send me to military school. Or something," she shuddered.

"Hmm," was all he said. His hand traced the side of her arm methodically. She shivered, though it wasn't because she was cold.

After a few moments of comfortable silence, Danny began to laugh again.

"What?" she asked "What's so funny?"

He caught his breath. "It's just so ironic," he managed. "Don't you know what day it is today?"

"Ummm.. Monday?" she asked, raising an eyebrow. She was pretty sure it was Monday.

He snickered. "Yeah, it is Monday," he admitted, and he abruptly turned intangible.

She fell through his body with a surprised gasp and landed flat against the bedspread. "What's so special about Monday?" she asked when he materialized directly above her, grinning like a maniac.

"Oh nothing," he mumbled, floating lazily closer. He pressed a kiss onto her forehead, her nose, her cheek. She turned her head to catch his lips but he dodged and pressed one against her chin instead. His hands reached down and held her head still while he pressed his lips against her cheek and then her neck, laughing at her failing attempts to kiss him back.

"Hold still," she told him, trying again to kiss him. But he dodged again and kissed the crook in her clavicle, and once just at the very corner of her mouth, just to antagonize her.

That did it. She reached both hands up behind his head and didn't let him escape, forcing him to actually kiss her. He laughed into the kiss, and somehow she felt that he had won the game instead of her.

So she evened the playing field, wrapping her arms up around his waist and pulling him abruptly out of the air.

She felt his momentary shock as the weight of his body fell against her, and knew that she was the winner this time.

It had never really bothered her when the thought arose that she was kissing a ghost. She'd been serious in what she said to Danny. She didn't care what he was. He was there and he was real, and that was all that mattered. The only thoughts that weakened her were the ones that whispered '_you can't really have him.'_ The ones that reminded her that whatever they had couldn't last forever, because Danny could never grow old with her. Not that she _wanted _that… At least she could keep telling herself that.

It was just as hard as ever to think of Danny as actually, physically, dead. It was almost impossible. He was alive, he _felt _alive, he made _her _feel alive.

And sometimes, when she was pressed against his chest, or her fingers on his wrist, she could swear she felt the faintest hint of a heartbeat. Was she kidding herself? Did she so desperately want him to be alive that she was hearing her own heartbeat echoing in her ear and thinking it was in Danny's chest?

She sensed that he was weightless still, that he was drifting upward subtly, so she pulled against him fiercely, crushing him against her. She had no idea where all this ferocity came from. Something like a whine escaped from his lips into their kiss, and her heart flittered madly. The weightlessness went out of him then and his knees tucked themselves against her, one on her outer thigh and one resting between them.

Maybe it was the beating of her own heart she felt when his chest pressed against hers, but she really didn't think so. She wanted desperately to ask, but what would she ever say? "_Does your heart beat?" _Ghosts weren't _supposed _to have heartbeats. What if she was wrong, and she crushed his feelings?

She traced the seams running along the shirt of his black jumpsuit, tucked her thumbs into the loops holding up his segmented white belt. When she opened her eyes she saw that adorable green glow on his cheeks where the ectoplasm had rushed. _Do ghosts blush? _she wondered absently. She'd never seen it happen to any ghost but Danny. _This one does._

His eyelids opened a crack and he saw she was looking at him. He smiled sneakily and moved his kisses down to her neck again, and this time she let him win. His breath raised goosebumps on her skin, though she was sure they'd be there whether or not his breath was like fog. As he moved along the base of her neck down to the dipping hem of her shirt, her knees bent reactively, her hands pulling him closer even though he couldn't get any closer.

As her legs bent up, pushing against his body, she felt something that truly surprised her, and her face flushed madly in response. She glanced down at Danny but his gaze was trained on her pale skin, the glow on his cheeks even more pronounced than before.

She didn't mention it.

He looked highly embarrassed, and like he was about to pull away, so she wrapped her arms around him, keeping him there.

It must have been an hour before she finally stopped kissing him, and they lay pressed against each other for a long while, listening to the wind outside.

"I have to go," he whispered softly into the dark room. She was laying face down on his chest, her ear pressed against his heart. She could hear it, she knew she could. It was there, just below the surface. It was slow and faint, but it was _there._

"Do you have to?" she murmured sleepily. She was so comfortable…

He chuckled. "I can't stay here all night."

"Why? You have… someplace.. important to be?" she mumbled.

He trailed the tips of his fingers across her back. "I could stay here till you fall asleep, if you want."

"I want," she mumbled.

"Alright. Go to sleep then, sleepy."

"Mmm. Night.. Danny.."

"Night Sammy. Oh… and happy Valentine's Day."

She fell asleep and dreamt that she was a glowing green bird, skirting between the clouds and the stars.

When she woke up in the morning he was gone.

* * *

Yeah, definitely some _heavy_ adult themes in this chapter. Before anyone says anything, I'll remind you that I _did _rate this "T." And also they are both seniors already and therefore 17-18 years old.. so I'm being realistic, okay. This is also why I use profanity. I am way into realism. I don't like to shy away from adult content that I think adds a healthy layer to the story.

So just enjoy the story and relax your buns. :)


	9. Chapter 9

**Important Author's Note**: By now I've noticed some people mention that** A)** Danny seems a bit too perfect, and **B)** Sam is a bit too mean to Danny (Fenton).

I think if you think that then you may have missed my point in these characters. Try to think about everything that's happened in the three years since The Accident in this story. Danny _isn't_ perfect in this fic. He royally screwed up, in not telling anyone about his accident in the first place and forcing away his friends in a misguided attempt to keep them safe.

The reason Sam is 'mean' to Danny Fenton is because she (and everyone else) tried reeeaaaally hard for a really long time to help him and be there for him, but he just pushed everyone away. No one knew why. She was really hurt by that, and that's why she has hard feelings towards him. She doesn't understand why he would do that. She's more confused and hurt than angry, really, but in a character like Sam that manifests as lashing out, hence her outburst at Danny F in Chapter Five.

Okay I'm done with this explanation now haha :)

* * *

**Chapter Nine**

x - x - x

For a second time she found herself reluctantly on the Fentons' doorstep, waiting anxiously for someone to answer, hoping it wasn't _him._

Tangible relief washed over her when it was Jack who answered the door, holding a half-constructed ectogun in one hand.

He blinked down at her in surprise for a moment, then burst into a wide smile and gripped her in a massive bear hug. "Sammy!" he yelled ecstatically. "What are you doing here?"

She smiled despite herself at the warm welcome. "I'm here to see Mrs. Fenton, actually," she told him as he ushered her inside. Truthfully Jack could answer her questions as easily as Maddie could, but Maddie was always the more level-headed and objective of the two. So she really wanted to talk to Maddie.

"Oh," he said, and she caught a hint of disappointment. She bit her lip, knowing that he'd been hoping she was here to see Danny Fenton. "I'll go get her from the lab," he assured her. "Make yourself comfortable. There's cookies on the counter if you want one!" he added as he bustled down the stairs.

Sam sat with her hands folded at the counter, and hoped desperately that their son wasn't home.

Maddie came up a few minutes later, holding a wrench in her hand. "Hi honey," she said sweetly. "To what do I owe this surprise?"

Sam chewed on her lip, wondering where on earth to begin. "I just wanted to talk," she began slowly. "I had some questions, and I didn't know who else to ask."

Maddie looked at her curiously and took a seat beside her on the next stool. "About what? Oh, did Jack tell you we have cookies?" She picked one up and offered it to Sam, but she shook her head politely. Maddie shrugged and set it back down on the plate.

"About.. ghosts," Sam admitted, gauging Maddie's reaction.

"Oh?" she said. A look of strange pride came over her, and Sam knew she was feeling triumphant that she'd passed on her interests in ghosts to somebody. "What can I tell you about them?"

"Well…" Here came the tricky part. "I want to know your personal theory. On why they started showing up all at once three years ago." _Danny died three years ago._

Maddie raised her eyebrows. "Well… no one knows for sure. One thing we know is that it began happening in the late fall of that year, just after we succeeded in creating our Ghost Portal. We thought at first that maybe they were actually escaping from our portal. Some of them were… but most of them weren't. We weren't sure _how _they were getting in. There were more natural portals around than there had ever been before. It still mystifies us, although the Guys in White seem to think our portal is the root of the problem." She said 'Guys in White' like it was a swear word.

Sam nodded, though she was disappointed that Maddie didn't have a clear idea why it started happening. She felt for some reason that it all related back to Danny, who'd started showing up right when the rest of them did. But he was the only one that had actually died right at that time.

"Okay… next question," Sam continued. "How much do we know about the anatomy of ghosts?" she asked tentatively.

"Anatomy?" Maddie asked.

Sam nodded, feeling a blush rise unbidden to her cheeks at the word 'anatomy,' thinking of why exactly she was asking the question. Of the curiosity she'd felt when Danny was pressed hard against her when they were kissing. She was sure she'd felt that happen, but she was wondering _how _it had happened. She reminded herself that _Maddie _didn't know why, and she tried to stifle her slight embarrassment.

"Well," Maddie began, "ghosts don't really have anatomy, at least not in the same sense that people do. The don't have systems like people do, nervous systems, or circulatory or skeletal systems.. or any of that. When they feel pain it's an auto-response, fabricated by their imprinted memories. If you were to cut one in half, sorry for the crude example, but if you did that then you'd see they were just pure ectoplasm on the inside."

Sam nodded her head numbly. Maddie was just spewing the same nonsense from the books Sam had already read. It was dead wrong. She had _seen _Danny feel pain and knew it was real. She'd felt the bones under his skin, the way his ribs fit against each other. How could they not be real?

"So.. a ghost wouldn't have any bones?" she asked. "They wouldn't have a heartbeat or pumping blood? Or say.. fingerprints?" _They wouldn't be able to get hard? _she added mentally, her blush deepening.

Maddie laughed. "Of course not. Ghosts don't _need _any of those things." She looked at Sam curiously, as if she had just asked if the color of the sky was red.

"Okay," Sam conceded. This was only succeeding in making her more confused than before. "One more question."

"Go ahead," she smiled.

"What are your thoughts on Danny Phantom?"

She expected Maddie to tell her exactly how evil he was, what a menace he was to the town. After all she'd seen Jack and Maddie chasing him down time after time, shouting obscenities at him, trying to capture him themselves. But to her surprise, Maddie just frowned.

"That's a good question," she said quietly. "The truth is, I don't know what to think anymore."

"…What do you mean?"

"We used to think of him like we think of all the other ghosts, of course. But lately I've been rather confused."

"Why?"

Maddie was playing absently with the wrench in her hands. "Well, a while back we actually managed to capture Phantom briefly."

Sam's breath caught in her throat. _Danny never told me that!_

"He escaped fairly quickly, but we did manage to get an ectoplasm sample from him for the first time."

Sam listened numbly.

"I was studying it under the microscope, and it wasn't behaving like any other ectoplasm I'd ever seen. It was coalescing in patterns, similar to cellular structures. It was beyond baffling. It was the biggest discovery we'd seen since our portal became operational. I wanted to break it down to a baser level, to examine the structures themselves. So I put it under our destabilizer, which is supposed to blast it with a range of frequencies until it finds the correct frequency that breaks down the matter. There's a magic number – it's different for all types of ectoplasm. But.. when it hit the right frequency, instead of breaking down, it turned red."

Sam's eyebrows raised and Maddie shrugged.

"I know, it's strange. I was completely baffled. But when I put it back under the microscope, I knew what I was looking at. It was _blood."_

_"Blood?" _Sam repeated incredulously.

"Yes," she said flatly. "I don't understand…" Her lips pressed into a thin line. "Phantom is a complete anomaly. I'd always been suspicious of his nature, because he never really followed the behavioral patterns of other ghosts. But this just raised more questions than it answered. I don't know what's different about him, but something is. Which is why we've stopped hunting him," she added sadly. "I'll not hunt something that I'm not even sure is a ghost."

"That's… incredibly fascinating," Sam forced herself to say.

"Yes, it really is," Maddie agreed. "But it's too bad that I can't study the sample further."

"Wait, why not?"

Maddie's absent expression turned into a harsh glare. "Because that stupid government agency came in and confiscated all our research weeks and weeks ago."

Sam's heart tried to leap out of her throat. "Like.. how many weeks ago?" she squeaked.

"December," she replied, and Sam felt an odd weight in her chest.

_December was when the GIW captured the Box Ghost. _What did that have to do with anything? She couldn't shake the pervasive feeling that it had everything to do with it_. _They captured him because they wanted information about Danny. They had just gotten _this_ information about Danny… But they needed more? She could practically hear the Box Ghost repeating _"I'm sorry," _again and again to Danny in a dark alley. The Box Ghost had told them what they wanted to know.. Had told them _what _exactly?_  
_

Sam bit her lip and tried to remain calm. It was hard, as just being in the Fenton household was upsetting. All it did was remind her exactly how much her Danny reminded her of Danny Fenton, and it was still as painful as ever. _I did not replace one Danny with the other, _she told herself for the millionth time. She only wished she could believe it. Now it seemed this Danny was keeping secrets from her too, just like the last. She wanted to scream.

"That agency is corrupt and useless," Maddie fumed, "and now they stole years of our research! The only thing they didn't have a warrant to take was our actual equipment. Although they're trying to get that now too."

"They are?"

"Yes, they're applying for a warrant to get their hands on all our equipment, including our Ghost Portal, in the name of trying to stymy the ghost attacks. They still believe our portal is the cause of it, even though we've proved that the majority of the attacks are coming from other naturally occurring portals in the area. They want to completely shut us down," Maddie breathed, her shoulders hunched over.

Sam's other thoughts immediately stopped, as she realized what Maddie was saying. If the GIW succeeded in that they would be ruining the business that Maddie and Jack had built from the ground up, that they had built their entire lives around. Their whole life's work.

"I'm so sorry," Sam murmured, and rested her hand on Maddie's hand.

Maddie smiled warmly at her. "Don't worry, Sam. It'll be fine. We're always fine. Now then, did you have any other questions about ghosts?" she added amusedly.

"No, I suppose not," she admitted, but she suddenly felt reluctant to leave.

"Well, I'm glad you came by to talk with me. You know you're always welcome here, if you have any more questions about ghosts. Or if you ever need anything. You know we love you, Sammy. But.. I simply won't let you leave until you eat a cookie," she told her, pointing to the chocolate chip covered cookie pile in the center of the counter.

Sam laughed, ready to refuse her again politely. "Are they vegan?" she joked, knowing full well that ninety-nine percent of cookie recipes included eggs.

"Oh Sam, you know we always make a couple of them vegan," she replied quietly, turning the plate around to show that on the other side there were three of them stacked, set off to the side. "These are the ones without eggs."

Sam picked one up numbly, and fought the sudden urge to run far away.

* * *

God why is the end of this chapter so depressing? I got so sad while writing this. I think it's because my best friend's family pseudo-adopted me into their lives because my fam is psycho. So yeah how Sam feels about Maddie is how I feel about my friend's mom, which is why I was SO SAD while writing these Maddie chapters.

Just thought you'd like to know. Lol.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten**

x - x - x

"You're awfully quiet tonight," Danny observed, his upside-down face popping downward between hers and her math worksheet on the desktop.

"Well, I'm doing my homework," she rebutted, nudging his face out of the way with her pencil. The truth was she had barely gotten to problem six and she'd been working on it for an hour. Calculus was impossible when you were as distracted as she was.

He floated down and sat on the desk next to her paper, flicking the corner of the worksheet absently. "Yeah but usually you complain about your homework the whole way through, or else talk about other stuff. You know you've barely said three words to me since I got here?"

She watched his wrist as he played with her paper. Imagined that she could hear a faint pulse in thick veins beneath the skin. Secrets, secrets, secrets. God she hated secrets.

She huffed and slid her worksheet out of his reach, and circled her final answer for problem number six. "I'm just distracted," she admitted honestly.

"By my radiant beauty?" he guessed, beaming sardonically.

She rolled her eyes and read problem seven over for a third time, still having failed to grasp what it was asking her to do.

"Hey seriously Sam, what's eating at you?" he added, the sarcasm gone. "Did I do something?"

"No," she sighed, though it wasn't quite true. Problem seven was still eluding her and she had just realized that she did the first three problems completely incorrectly, so she slapped her pencil down in annoyance. "Can I ask you something?" she said suddenly.

"Uh.. yeah. Anything."

"Do you know why the ghosts all began showing up at once three years ago?"

She looked up from her paper and saw that his expression had suddenly become wary. A dozen suspicions were immediately confirmed.

"Yeah… I know."

"Are you going to tell me?" she asked, feeling a little hurt. Lied to. She had mentioned curiosity about this topic many times to him in the past, and he'd never given her an inkling that he knew the cause of the phenomenon.

He sighed, twiddling his thumbs in his lap. "Yeah I'll tell you. At first I didn't know why. I thought it was the Ghost Portal that uh.. that the Fentons opened up. But it was obvious all the ghosts weren't escaping from it. You remember what I told you about Frostbite and the Far Frozen, right?"

"Right.." she said slowly, trying to follow his train of thought.

"Well his people have this universal map. They call it the Infi-map. It tracks all the portals between the Ghost Zone and our world. They keep tabs on all of them. So I went to talk to him, to try to understand how all these ghosts were getting in so suddenly, why it was focused in Amity Park of all places.

He told me that when the Fentons opened up a stable portal, the presence of that constant pathway stabilized all the ambient fleeting paths in the area. You know Amity Park has always been known for ghost sightings. Apparently it's because there have always been naturally occurring portals in this area. They come and go. But with a permanent stable portal here, the other ones began to stabilize too, concentrating and appearing more frequently." He laughed. "Kinda sucks doesn't it?"

Sam nodded dazedly, trying to take in all this new info. "So the Guys in White were actually right then," she murmured ponderously. The Fentons' portal _was _the root of the problem.

"What? What are you talking about?"

"I was talking to Maddie Fenton last week. She said the Guys in White thought their portal was causing the increase in ghost attacks. So I guess they were actually right for once. And I guess we won't be having them for much longer then, because Maddie said they were trying to get a warrant to shut down the portal."

To her surprise, Danny sighed wearily. "Yeah, I know."

"Wait, you _know?"_

"Yeah, they've been trying to get one for a while. I'd stop them if I could, but it's not something you can fight with your fists."

"Why would you want to stop them?"

He ran one hand raggedly through his hair. "When I found all this out, my immediate reaction was wanting to shut down the portal too. But Frostbite explained that it wouldn't stop the attacks. Rather, it would massively destabilize the concentrated energy that surrounds Amity Park now. Basically, it wouldn't get rid of the natural portals. That's impossible. Physics, you know. 'Energy can be neither created nor destroyed.' Shutting down the thing that was stabilizing them would just scatter them. Imagine.. imagine that Amity Park is like a shaken-up soda can, and the portals are the bubbles. Deactivating the Fentons' portal would be like popping open the can.

So Amity Park would benefit, but the surrounding county, the state.. it would be a nightmare. Frostbite showed me a simulation of what the map might look like if the portal was suddenly deactivated after all this time. It looked like someone flicked green paint at the map, that's how scattered the portals were across the country."

"Wow… just, wow." She didn't know what to say. Why in god's name had he never told her any of this before? She didn't have a single secret from Danny, and suddenly it felt like there was this whole other life under his surface that she knew nothing about.

A dozen secondary questions, a dozen suspicions swirled around, but the one that tumbled from her mouth was the last one she was expecting. "Does this portal stuff.. does it have something to do with your death, Danny?"

He blinked at her, clearly taken aback. "Why would you think that?"

"Only for a million reasons. Like why would you never mention this to me? What possible reason could there have been? The only thing you've ever kept from me was information about your death," or so she used to think, "and you showed up exactly when all these other ghosts did, but you're the only one whose actual death was right then. There's some connection I'm missing, I know it. And then you refuse to tell me what your name was before you died, and nobody remotely like you died here before you showed up. But why would your obsession be Amity Park if you didn't even live here? I've always tried to respect your right to not talk about your death, but I just have so many questions about you and I can't help but think you're hiding something from me."

She examined his hurt expression. Imagined she could hear his heartbeat quicken under the accusation.

"Where is all this coming from?" he asked, trying to keep the pain from his voice. "Sam.. I'm not-"

"No. Don't try to tell me you're not. I _know _you're hiding something." If she'd been uncertain before, she wasn't now. She couldn't do it. She couldn't lose another friend to a world of secrets.

She vividly imagined the green ectoplasm coursing through him, distantly heard a high frequency disrupting the glowing matter, breaking it down, into red flowing blood.

"Sam, please," he begged quietly, hanging his head. "I can't. I can't tell you. I'm sorry."

"Can't tell me _what_?" she seethed, shoving her computer chair back from the desk, rising to her feet. "Can't tell me what the Box Ghost might have told the Guys in White? Can't tell me what Maddie Fenton found out when she studied the sample of your ectoplasm?"

His eyes widened when she mentioned Maddie, his hands gripping the edge of the desk forcefully. "What does that have to do with-"

"It has _everything _to do with it!" Her hands were clenched into fists at her sides. She hadn't realized until now how much it hurt. Now that it was confirmed that Danny was keeping something from her, it was so much more painful than the what-ifs.

She heard Maddie's confused voice echoing in her ears. "_I'll not hunt something that I'm not even sure is a ghost."_

Her voice shook as she tried to remain calm. "I thought I was imagining it but I _knew _I felt your heart beating. I felt it!" _Ghosts don't have hearts. _"And your ectoplasm.. when Maddie studied it, it broke down into _blood."_ He looked like he wanted to sink through her floor and disappear.

"_Are _you even a ghost, Danny?" she heard herself whispering, searching his face for an answer. His torn expression. Didn't he know by now that she didn't care what he was? She just wanted to _know. _Didn't he trust her?

He took a hesitant step forward, raising his hand and then dropping it again dejectedly. "Sam, I… I don't know what to say."

"You can start by _telling me the truth."_

His green eyes fizzled softly, like dying coals. "I _am _a ghost," he said quietly. "But you're right. There is something different about me, something that sets me apart from the other ghosts. But I just can't tell you what it is."

"And why not?" she replied hotly. "Don't you trust me?" _Don't push me away again, Danny. _She pulled up short, blinking away the thought. _A__gain? No, different Danny. _

"Of course I trust you," he answered, wounded. "I haven't kept it a secret for _my _safety. It's for _your _safety, Sam. Please, you have to believe me."

"Why should I?" she snapped. "Apparently there's a whole slew of secrets I didn't even know you had. How does keeping your secrets keep me safe?"

"It just does. If you knew.. everything would be different. I can't explain why, but it would. I gave up everything when I became what I am, to protect the people I cared about. Sparking this friendship with you.. it was so selfish of me. When you gave me the taste of having a friend again I couldn't let it go, not for a second time. I should have never done it, but I couldn't _help _myself Sam. But you have to understand. Telling you.. telling you my secret would be like undoing everything, undoing all the careful precautions I took when I died."

_You regret becoming friends with me?_

"_You should have never done it_?" she repeated, barely above a whisper. "You regret it?"

His head shook vigorously. "No, it's not _like _that Sam. I don't regret it, how could I ever regret it?" He closed the gap between them and his hand found its way into her hair. She resisted the urge to pull away. "But it was _selfish _of me, don't you get it? You'd be so much better off having never met me."

"How could you say that? Do you really think that? That protecting me is more important than _knowing _me?"

Danny looked down at her sadly, like the answer was completely obvious. "Protecting you is more important than _anything _to me," he murmured, and pressed a kiss against her temple.

"Don't," she whispered hoarsely. "I can't.. I'm not okay with this. I'm not okay with not knowing."

He pulled back, his face carefully blank.

"You're important to me too, you idiot. I can't.. I can't go through losing a best friend again. I can't do it," her voice broke at the end.

"Hey, you aren't going to lose me," he assured her, cradling her face in his wide hands. _T__here's more than one way to lose someone, _she thought, and for a moment she couldn't remember if she was arguing with Danny or Danny.

And she failed to find any reassurance in his confident expression. "Whatever you're hiding from me… the Guys in White know. I'm scared Danny, I'm scared that they're going to capture you. Can you tell me for sure that they won't?" She dared him to deny it.

His thumb brushed across her cheek absently. "No," he admitted quietly. "I think the Box Ghost told them what I am."

"And will it help them catch you?" she implored desperately.

"It might."

She squeezed her eyes closed, as if it might shut out the realization.

"Sam." His voice was directly in her ear, his breath tickling through her hair. His arms wrapped solidly across her back, pulling her in close. "It'll be okay."

Her hands pressed against his chest, half-heartedly pushing him away. "No, it won't be," she said, certain that it was true. She couldn't see how it would be okay. "Is this really a heartbeat?" she whispered, her ear pressed against the loose fabric over his chest.

"…Yes," he murmured into her hair.

"And you expect me to just not wonder how?" She pushed back forcefully, separating herself from him.

"Sam, _please," _he implored, reaching for her shoulders, but she stepped back.

"No. You need to decide, Danny. You think you're protecting me but I don't _want _to be protected anymore. It should be _my _choice, not yours! I don't want secrets. I just want.. I want you. All of you, without any reservations." Her cheeks flushed and her fierce glare dropped to the carpet. "So choose. You can tell me the truth and stay, or you can choose 'protecting' me and just go away."

She didn't think it would even be a choice. The answer to her was clear. But she must have underestimated how severe his hero complex was.

"Alright," he said quietly. "I get it. I wish I didn't have to keep it a secret from you, Sam, I really do."

"So, that's really what you choose?" She felt vaguely guilty for giving him the ultimatum, but she never really thought he would pick the wrong choice. Her gut churned painfully. "Fine then. _Fine."_

"Sam-" he reached for her again but she shoved his arms away.

"_No. _Don't bother. Just.. just leave me alone." She buried her face in her hands so she wouldn't have to look at him anymore.

As always he moved as silently as a shadow, but she felt it when he left. It was as if someone had closed a window against a cold draft.

She opened her eyes slowly into the empty room, blinking away tears. She wasn't sure if she was angrier at him or at herself. Part of her just wanted him to come back, so she could apologize for what she'd said. Part of her couldn't bear the thought of looking at him when it seemed there was someone else just beneath his surface that she didn't even know.

Moving numbly to the window, she opened it and peered down along the street, up and around the quiet dark night. He was gone.

One short orange candle flickered faintly inside on her windowsill. Drippings of wax were melting down the sides, pooling into the rainbow array of wax puddles littering the entire sill. Dozens of other candle stubs were scattered there, having been burnt down to the bottom, stuck to each other and to the surface, the memories of a hundred hazy nights, the echoes of a hundred invitations she'd sent out to a wandering friend.

Hurt and confusion burned in her heart and she blew out the orange candle, leaving her window dark for the first night in months.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven**

x - x - x

Sam looked at the half melted candles every day for a week, turning the purple Bic lighter over and over in her fingers, contemplating lighting one of them. It would be so simple. Just a quick flick of her thumb. A little flame in the window. Danny would see, and he would come back.

And they would what? Go back to the way things were? Pretend there was no secret? Talk? They would kiss? She would lean on his chest and say "I'm sorry" over the sound of his impossible heart beat?

In the end she would always set the lighter back down. Soon, but not today. She needed time to think. Her window stayed dark, and he stayed away.

School was the worst. She tried not to watch him when he zipped past chasing one ghost or another. Danny had been right, the Guys in White were no longer stumbling after him. But it didn't allay her fears that they would catch him. It only made her all the more suspicious, like they were biding their time, setting elaborate trick-wires that Danny was unconsciously backing into.

On the first Friday of March, Sam walked onto campus to find more than a dozen GIW vans scattered across the parking lot. Without knowing quite why, the bottom dropped out of her stomach.

Burly men in spotless white suits tramped through the crowded halls all day, speaking to each other in hushed tones. Sam couldn't muster up the heart to glare at them murderously like usual. Instead she felt the pricklings of fear in the back of her mind. Why were there ten times more of them here than normal? School policy stated that there was a limit of twenty agents allowed on campus at any given time. What could have changed?

Between third and fourth period, Sam took a series of deep breaths at her locker. There hadn't been a ghost attack so far today, which was pretty good. She didn't know if she could handle the anxiety of seeing Danny swarmed by a hundred GIW agents at once.

Sam checked the tiny mirror at the back of her locker, and noted the dark circles under her eyes. Somehow she was sleeping less, though her late night visitor had stopped visiting. Her face stared back at her, tired and confused. She sighed and leaned her math textbook against the reflective surface so she wouldn't have to look at it.

The locker door slammed shut and she let out a small uncharacteristic 'eep' that would have had other Goths clutching their guts laughing.

"Hey Sam!" Tucker shouted as he leaned on her locker, but as he took in her shock he quickly became amused. "Man, you're really on edge today, you know that? _Relax_, Sam. I know you hate these Suits but they'll go away soon. Just ignore them."

That was Tucker for you. Even though he knew nothing about what was going on he still homed in like a beacon on Sam's problem. It was so bittersweet.

"Uh, Sam?" his happy-go-lucky grin continued to fall as he took in Sam's torn expression. "Did I miss something? What's up?"

Just then about ten GIW agents traipsed behind them, their hard shoes clapping loudly against the hallway tile. Sam watched them go warily and then rammed her head dejectedly into her closed locker door. She let out a frustrated 'unngg' and hit her head on it one more time.

"Hey.. don't do that," he said, resting his hand on Sam's shoulder. "Com'ere," he told her abruptly, and began pulling her by the arm away down the hall.

Sam stumbled after him, barely aware of her own two feet, dragging her backpack along like a wet rag.

She looked up when a door closed and saw with a bit of a shock that they were in a cluttered janitor's closet, dimly lit with one hanging bulb.

"Okay, spill," he said bluntly, crossing his arms. "We're not leaving here until you tell me what the heck has been wrong with you lately. And I don't care if we miss all of fourth period. I can wait."

A dozen different denials bubbled up in her throat, but they all died when she took in Tucker's expression. He knew something was very wrong, and suddenly she just didn't have it in her to lie to him anymore.

So, she spilled. She spilled every single detail.

She didn't tread lightly. She included every bit of awe and wonder and worry and fear that had plagued her these last few months. After all, this was _Tucker_. Her best friend. She should have been telling him the whole time, and she told him that too. Here she was, pissed at Danny for keeping secrets when all the while she'd been keeping secrets from Tucker. She was such a lousy hypocrite.

By the time she was finished they were both sitting cross-legged on the floor of the closet, and fourth period actually was almost over.

"Crimony, Sam. That is one _heck _of a secret."

She kept her eyes trained on the dusty tiled floor.

"I just… wow. This is a lot to take in all at once."

"I know. I'm so sorry, Tuck."

"Hey, you don't have to be sorry. I was starting to worry when you started hanging out with me a bit less. I never woulda guessed it was because you were in _lo–oove..." _He wiggled his eyebrows jokingly, poking fun at her to lift her spirits.

His words failed to reassure her, however, and Sam's head fell into her hands.

"Wait, _are _you in love?" he asked incredulously. His wide eyes said he had been purely kidding.

Sam bit her lip, alarmed when neither a denial or confirmation came easily.

"It's okay, forget I asked," he added quickly.

"I just don't know what to _do, _Tucker. I can't.. go through that again. I can't lose a best friend again."

"Hey, it'll be okay," he said soothingly. "I'm sure the Guys in White are just being overzealous like usual, there's probably nothing to worry about."

Sam shook her head solemnly at her knees but said, "Thanks, Tuck. Thanks for listening."

"That's what I'm here for, duh. But hey, we should probably get going before the bell rings so no one sees us come out of here."

She grinned at him despite herself and let him help her to her feet. The two of them emerged into the hall just as students began clamoring out of classrooms.

As they headed to the cafeteria a crackling noise came over the intercom, followed by Lancer's monotone. He sounded particularly irritated in this announcement. "All lunchtime club meetings are cancelled for the day, and all students are to report to the cafeteria with no exceptions. Lunch will be extended into fifth and sixth period for the day." The intercom fizzled once more, and he repeated the announcement before falling silent.

Tucker and Sam exchanged a look before following the muttering throng of students down the hall.

Sam grimaced when they came into the vaulted room. It seemed that every GIW agent on campus had congregated here. They were spread out across the room, and the cafeteria tables had all been shoved to the outer walls. A dozen small curtained booths stood in a line at the far end of the room, and the rest of the room was packed with loud and confused teenagers.

After about ten minutes of confusion, one of the agents clicked on a megaphone and started shouting his head off. "Alright now the sooner you all cooperate the sooner we can be done with this. Everyone line up by last name – there are signs posted on the east wall."

Giving each other wary glances, the students milled about grudgingly until they were all under their respective sign. Sam leaned against the back wall under a white paper with a fat "M" in block font. She narrowed her eyes as the first slew of students' names were called through the megaphone, watching as they went behind the curtains at the far end of the room. On Sam's end of the room the students were restless and unruly, and GIW agents stood around like sheepdogs guarding the exits and rows like the students might try to escape the flock at any moment.

Sam met Tucker's eyes a few rows away and he shrugged massively.

The whispers spread quickly, as the first few rounds of students came back from the sectioned booths. None of them were gone for very long.

"_Blood-"_

The word stuck out in some kid's whispers ten feet away. Sam turned toward them, trying to catch the conversation.

"_Can they even do that? Is it legal?"_

_"I dunno, they showed me some document that said they could.."_

They were calling a new round of students now. She had no idea how long till they'd get to her, because they were calling all different lettered names at once. Bored out of her mind, she tried to follow their pattern but soon gave up. She attempted to find Tucker again and saw that he had left his place near the head of the line of "F" students. She spotted his red beret nearer to the wall, and it looked like he was talking to another "F" student.

Oh.

Danny Fenton was pressed up against the wall like he wanted to sink into it, and even from here she could see that he was full-on freaking out. His eyes were scanning the agents warily, cautiously, his hands shoved deep into his jean pockets. She wondered if 'Guys in White' fell under his 'fear of the paranormal.' She wondered if he'd be running from the room soon, as he so often did. But somehow she didn't think he could slip by unnoticed between the massive scowling agents standing by the doors.

His mouth was moving quickly as he talked to Tucker, shaking his head vigorously. Sam felt a rush of pride for Tucker's sense of character, that he would even bother trying to help Danny feel better after everything Danny did to him. But well, that was Tucker for you.

When they called "Samantha Manson to Booth D" she set her face and marched over there, prepared to give them an earful.

And she realized why she had heard the word "blood." There were taking blood samples.

"What? _Why?" _she spat. "I don't have to agree to this, I'll have you know I have a _lawyer_-"

"Yes, and this is perfectly legal," the towering agent in Booth D told her, the picture of agency perfection with his hundred-dollar-haircut, he looked like a standard corporate slimeball. He procured a document from his pocket marked by a golden seal. "You can have your lawyer look this over, if you want," he sneered. "It took a long time to set this all up legally. So you can be sure we're well within the law. And we need a blood sample from every minor living in this city. You're within your rights to refuse today, but our operations won't conclude until we procure a sample from every student at this high school. So why don't we just cooperate now and make it easier, hmm?" he beamed at her overenthusiastically, and she snatched the paper from him, reading it over carefully.

In the end, she reluctantly allowed him to draw a splotch of blood from her arm, wondering why in god's name the GIW were doing this.

"So when did Amity Park come under full-time military occupation?" she hissed scathingly as the man drew her blood.

"You'd think people would be more grateful for the organization trying to rid them of the ghost infestation,' he snapped back, pressing a cotton ball onto the red dot on her arm forcefully.

"We'd be grateful if your organization actually _did _anything remotely useful," she barked, with any pretense of politeness she might have had completely gone.

To her annoyance he merely grinned, revealing a row of crooked teeth. "You'll all be thankful soon enough, and we'll be out of your hair. There won't be a problem in this city much longer."

"Oh yeah?" she drawled sarcastically.

"_Yeah_, you little smart mouth," he muttered, wrapping a line of medical tape around her arm to hold the cotton ball in place. "We got the go ahead to shut down those idiotic Fentons' portal, which will effectively cut off the ghosts' mode of entry into the city. The ghosts will be gone by eleven a.m. tomorrow. On top of that we're about five seconds away from catching the ghost kid. So this town can kiss their worries goodbye, and we can kiss you ungrateful psychotic citizens goodbye. Now, if you'd be so kind as to get out of my booth, girl."

Rage boiled up and she could practically feel the steam pouring from her ears. "_Of all the-"_

But he was already ushering her through the curtain, and she had no chance to give him a piece of her mind before the next student was taking her place.

She retreated back to the "M" students, glaring daggers at all the white suits as she passed them.

She was back in time to hear "Daniel Fenton to Booth A." She found Tucker's red beret in the "F" crowd again, and his hand was on Danny's shoulder. The two looked like they were talking fast in low whispers. What could they possibly be talking about? Danny ran his hands through his hair despairingly, looking around wildly at the scattered agents, especially the ones lining the doors, like a rabbit surrounded in a lion's den. Tucker shook Danny's shoulders, but Danny didn't calm.

"Daniel Fenton to Booth A, Daniel Fenton to Booth A."

Suddenly Danny's eyes met Sam's from across the room. Only for a moment, because they squeezed tightly closed and his head hung low. He and Tucker exchanged a few more words and Danny slunk slowly across the room to the first curtained booth. He looked for all the world as if he was a prisoner walking the Last Mile.

It took until the end of sixth period to get to every student in the room. By the time they got out of school Sam was ready to bash her head in from the boredom and the confusion and the irritation. She made a beeline for Tucker when they finally released them, and saw Danny bursting out of the cafeteria doors ahead of every other student.

"What was _that _about?" she asked Tucker.

"I don't have the slightest clue," he shrugged. "I mean why would they want blood samples? It doesn't make any sense.."

"I mean that thing with Danny," she clarified.

"Oh. I don't know man, it was weird. Really weird. The guy was terrified. I mean, he's barely even spoken to me since freshman year but when I went to see if he was okay back there, because it looked like he was hyperventilating, he just started freaking out. I can't imagine what could possibly scare him that bad. He made it sound like the GIW taking his blood was the end of the world."

"Is he afraid of needles or something?" she wondered as they came out onto the front steps of the school, pushing past other milling and chattering students.

"Nah, it wasn't getting his blood drawn that was scaring him. It was the GIW drawing his blood that scared him. He told me he needed to get out of there, but doing that would only make it worse."

"Majorly weird. You think this falls under his fear of the paranormal?"

"I dunno, Sam. I've been questioning that theory a lot lately. I'm not sure he actually _is _scared of the paranormal. And you know what else he said?"

She raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"He.. apologized. He started apologizing profusely over and over, for everything that's happened since freshman year."

Sam's jaw dropped. "You serious?"

"I've never been more serious. I don't know why he would choose _now _of all times to apologize to me. I'm kind of freaked about it actually. When he finally went off to the booth he looked like he was walking to the electric chair."

Sam stuffed her hands in her pockets, remembering that she'd had the exact same mental image.

Just then she noticed Danny sitting at the curb in front of the school, staring straight ahead. The students kept a wide berth around him. Sam was never sure if they did that on purpose or subconsciously. "Wait here," she told Tucker, and before she could second guess herself she was approaching him. Her legs felt numb.

"Um.. Danny?" she said tentatively. It was hard. All she wanted was to be angry with him but he'd never actually _done _anything to her. And when she saw him like this it was impossible not to feel old emotions waking up, the need to reassure him, to cheer him, to protect him.

He snapped to attention at the sound of her voice, his shoulders stiffening. The throng of students continued to mull past them and she settled on the sidewalk next to Danny. She couldn't remember the last time _she'd _been the one to willingly initiate conversation between them.

"Danny, are you alright?"

His knuckles were white from the force of his grip on the concrete curb. She noticed he hadn't stuck around long enough for his agent to put gauze over his withdrawal site. When he finally looked her in the eyes, she could see it was only with great effort. "No. Actually, I'm not. I'm not okay."

"What's wrong? What happened back there?" What happened to _you? _Sam wondered if Tucker was gaping at them. Probably. She didn't feel like checking.

"It's.. It's hard to explain."

"Try me."

"It's not that simple, Sam." To her surprise, she noticed his eyes had begun to water. What on earth had scared him so badly?

"Oh yes it is. It's _always _been that simple Danny. I've always been here to listen. It's just you who didn't want to do the talking."

She hadn't meant to snap but it came out a bit roughly. She didn't realize it was possible but his expression fell further. He looked haunted, wasted, defeated. He looked like.. _I mean look at me! I am a ghost. All people ever see is a ghost. All I am is a ball of ectoplasm. _She shook her head to clear it.

"It wasn't you," Danny muttered hoarsely, his voice dripping with self-loathing that was scarily familiar. "It never was. I wanted to tell you guys it wasn't your fault. It was me. It was my fault, it was me. Just me..." _I'm a Class 8 Spectral Entity. I'm Target A-1. I'm fucking nothing to them! _

He'd slipped into a whisper now. "I'm sorry, Sam. I'm so sorry. I have to go." He was already halfway to the corner before Sam was fully on her feet.

Tucker walked Sam home and they were both fairly silent, neither knowing quite what to say. Sam hugged him goodbye and retreated into her cavernous hollow house. Neither parent was there to greet her, as per usual.

She climbed numbly up the staircase, each step punctuated by thoughts of a different Danny. She wasn't sure which one she was more worried about anymore.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

x - x - x

Dark fell like a curtain over Amity Park, and Sam's homework lay forgotten in her backpack, her dinner half-eaten and forgotten on her desktop. Her book lay forgotten on the floor and her headphones lay silent and forgotten on her head, the playlist having ended a lifetime ago.

The purple Bic lighter stared accusingly up at her in her hand. _Just light a freaking candle already, _it seemed to say.

A light flickered in the corner of her eye. At first she thought she was thinking so much about candles that she hallucinated one, but then she looked up and saw that the light was real. Through the dark glass of her window she could see a tall green flame.

She removed her headphones as curiosity consumed her, and she went to the window to draw back her drapes the rest of the way and ease the creaking windowpane to the side. In the dead center of the outer windowsill there sat a fresh white candle, a long green flame licking at its wick.

Understanding washed through her, and the smallest of smiles snuck onto her face. An invitation. She glanced around but the night air was empty, the street below abandoned. Throwing one leg up onto the sill, and then the other, she tentatively took a seat by the candle, her feet dangling twenty feet above the distant pavement.

He materialized immediately, sitting on the other side of the candle.

"Hi," she said weakly.

"Hi," he returned.

She couldn't believe she'd willingly gone an entire week without seeing him. Her hand bridged the gap between them, finding his. Even as she prepared to yell and reprimand him again, she prepared to tell him everything about school, what the GIW had done, what they were going to do to the Ghost Portal, but before she could begin he spoke.

"I've been thinking a lot about what you said," he mentioned quietly. "Whether protecting you was more important than knowing you." He trailed off, gazing out at the dark buildings across the way. "You wanna talk a walk?" he asked lightly, squeezing her fingertips.

"A walk?" she repeated dumbly.

"Yeah. I just.. I want to do a normal boyfriend-girlfriend thing. For once in my life. It's been so long since I've been able to do _anything_ normal, and I want to do this. If only this once."

"Yeah, okay," Sam agreed, wondering where this was coming from.

He floated up from the sill and pulled her along effortlessly, sending weightless butterflies coursing through her abdomen.

They landed on the wet grass in the park, completely abandoned at this time of night. He glanced around warily as they set off down the dark path, keeping one eye peeled for stray ghosts.

"I like this," he mumbled, wrapping one arm around her waist as they stepped along in syncopated rhythm.

She kept quiet. She had a distinct feeling that he had something important to say and he was working up to it. The only sound in the deserted park was the chirping of conversations between hidden crickets.

After a while he stopped under a knotted oak tree and pulled her against him in a light hug, pressing his face into her hair.

"Sam," he said carefully, drawing away partially and resting his forehead against hers. "I've been so wrong about everything." His green eyes were glazed. Smothered. Distant.

Her arms fell from his neck, wrapping comfortably around his waist. She waited patiently for him to continue.

"It's a shame it took me so long," he muttered with a frown. "I don't even know where to begin," he breathed, his gaze dropping. "Feels like I've imagined this conversation half a million times but now that I'm finally having it I don't know what to say. Just bear with me, please. I'm no Romeo, or Hamlet, okay? Monologues aren't my thing, but I'm gonna do my best."

One of his hands found its way to the base of her short hair, playing with the strands distractedly. The wind rustled in the leaves overhead as Danny gathered his courage.

"When I uh.. when I told you that protecting you was more important than knowing you, I couldn't have been more wrong. You have to understand.. It's just that I've been protecting people for so long it's almost all I know how to _do _anymore. Look.. I lied when I told you about my obsession. When I died, I _wasn't_ like other ghosts. I didn't stick around because I already had an obsession. I had nothing. But because I spent all my time protecting Amity and the people I loved it _became _my obsession. Looking back, I was.. I dunno, blinded by it I guess. I couldn't see I was losing my humanity.

"I know it sounds dumb and corny, but you literally saved me when you introduced yourself back in September. I was so focused on the obsession of protecting everyone that I almost forgot what it was like.. being human. I forgot that some things are more important than safety, that some things are worth taking risks for. Things like friendship... like love," he added quietly, breaking eye contact with her again. "I thought it would be selfish to let you in, to ask you to take that risk... but now I realize I was being selfish all along by denying you the opportunity to choose for yourself if you wanted to take it."

"Danny.." she began, barely processing all of this. The word 'love' ringing in her ears.

"Wait," he interrupted. "There's still more." The intensity and desperation in his gaze made it seem like he wanted to spill out everything before he lost his nerve. "Everything's about to change," he whispered fiercely.

"Danny, telling me won't change anything," she assured him. She didn't think anything he had to say could possibly change her feelings about him.

"It will," he countered darkly. "But that's not what I meant. The Guys in White… they know. They got the last puzzle piece they needed today. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I – I won't be safe from them ever again. From here on out, nothing will be the same."

Terror rose in her throat like bile. "Danny, it can't – we'll find a way to.." She trailed off, leaning her forehead against his cold chest, having no idea how she meant to reassure him.

"Sam," he said boldly, and she was struck by his tone. He released her from his grasp and backed away from the tree, as if he needed ample room to make his confession. "It's time I told you the truth. About what I am."

She looked up quickly, caught the fleeting look of fear on his face. The same look of fear she'd seen earlier today, on her old best friend. He took a massive breath, letting it out slowly, purposefully.

"You were right," he began, "about my death being related to the activation of the Fentons' Ghost Portal. See, I was kind of there when it happened. It was actually my fault that it started working."

Sam's eyebrows furrowed as she followed along.

"I went inside it as a human and turned it on by accident," he chuckled darkly. "It didn't kill me," he said, leveling his eyes with hers. "At least not all the way."

"I don't understand," she breathed.

"I didn't understand at first either," he admitted, kicking at the grass with the toe of his boot. "Not until the other ghosts explained it to me. I'm not a ghost, or a human. I'm half of each."

"How can that be possible?" she breathed, though it was immediately ringing in her heart as true.

He shrugged. "It's a crazy world," he said quietly.

"So you're.. still.. half human?" She thought of the way his ectoplasm had turned to blood. The giant question mark in her brain turned into an exclamation point. Her brain reeled as she tried to absorb this, tried to understand what it all meant. A million questions whirred to life but she tried to put them on hold for the time being.

"Yes," he said slowly. And then his face grew very sad. "But unfortunately, that's not all."

How could there possibly be more?

"Please.. understand," he whispered, his voice distraught. "I'm not asking you to forgive me, just to understand. Why I did what I did. I was so alone when it happened, I didn't know what to do. I pushed everyone I knew out of my life because I was so scared something would happen to them. Because the ghosts, well, they hate me. My very _existence_ offends them. And it didn't help that I started catching them, throwing them back into the Ghost Zone. They wanted my blood. I guess I became obsessed with the idea that the ghosts would target someone I loved, just to get at me. I thought I was doing the right thing by shutting my friends and family out, even though it hurt them. They didn't know why I was pushing them away. They had no idea what I was."

Sam was staring at him openly. Trying to make sense of what he was saying.

"How.. how could your friends.. your family.. not know what you were? How could they not see what had happened to you?" she asked incredulously. Looking at him, it was so painfully obvious he was a ghost. She felt there was some final clue, some last great puzzle piece that had yet to click into place.

The look on his face deepened that suspicion. "This.. this is my ghost form," he said quietly, almost inaudibly. "I still have a human form too."

"..What?"

"I still have a human form," he repeated, and took another deep breath. "I can switch back and forth between them. Phantom… Phantom is just a name, just a stupid name I gave my ghost half because I had to call myself _something. _Phantom's not even real," he breathed. "It's just a name, and in here there's only me. It's just Danny."

Her breathing had stopped, her thought processes stopped. _A human form. _

"Show me," she said, though she was sure he was about to anyway.

He nodded numbly in affirmation. "Don't hate me," he pleaded.

"I couldn't hate you," she said automatically, though her heart wasn't in the words, she was too focused, too intent on the billion half-formed suspicions now racing around in her brain.

"But you already do," he mumbled. He glanced around, making certain the park around them was still one hundred percent devoid of people. With one last desperate look at her face he took another solid step backwards, widening the distance between them.

In the creeping darkness around them, the grass, the trees, Sam's body, everything was washed suddenly in white-blue light. She watched with dissociated captivity as a halo of hissing light sparked around his waist and split in half, two shining lightning rings travelling down and up across his body, and where they passed they seemed to sap away the blurry candlelike luminosity that always hung about him like an aura. Blue jeans came into view quickly, and a ruffled button up shirt, only half tucked in.

She knew. She knew before the rings crossed his white boots and his white trim collar, leaving behind ratty black converse shoes and his bare neck. She knew before the crackling ring passed across his pained expression and stole the blur from his features, stole the green glow from his eyes, leaving behind ones that didn't glow at all. She knew even though it was too dark to see them that the eyes would be the deepest arctic blue.

Danny Fenton's arms hung limply at his sides. His defeated expression remained unchanged. It was the same face, but sharper, crisper. The fog had been lifted.

Sam stepped backwards, the world spinning around her, and her back met the rugged bark of the oak tree.

There was a long, long, perpetually long, silent moment, and even the crickets seemed to have taken the hint and shut up.

"Say something," he said desperately, cutting through the thick silence.

A hundred thoughts vied for her attention at once. _He tricked me, _but he didn't. _He lied to me, _but he didn't. _It's not true, _but it is.

"What would you have me say?" she whispered, surprised she could even speak. Three and a half years had just fallen away from her in a single moment. She felt like the rug had been yanked from under her feet.

"Say you don't hate me," he whimpered.

"Danny.. I _never _hated you. I thought.. I thought all this time that you.." Her hands flew up to her mouth, as three and a half years of realizations crashed through her. "How could you let us think.. _Why.." _Words failed and she let out a frustrated choking sound.

"I told you why," he said quickly. "It was so stupid of me. God Sam, I wish I could make you understand how sorry I am. There is no way I could ever make this up to you. To any of you."

Her brain was folding in on itself, trying to reconcile everything she thought about Danny Phantom with everything she thought about Danny Fenton. She had a thousand questions to ask him, a thousand accusations to make, she wanted desperately to be angry but everything she had to be angry about he had already apologized for. She never would have thought she could feel so many emotions at once.

Her world had flipped upside-down in a second, all of her feelings that she thought she had were thrown for a loop. Every emotion she felt for the ghost was suddenly and mercilessly mingled with the ones for the familiar boy standing in front of her. She wasn't even trying, it happened without her permission. All at once, two people had been merged in her brain. The bark pricked through her shirt into her skin as she leaned against it, trying to remain steady.

But the presiding emotion that emerged, drowning out all the others like a flood, was overwhelming relief. Like a three and a half year siege on her heart had been lifted.

It was Danny. It was _her _Danny. It had been all along, and if she hadn't tried so damned hard to wipe Danny Fenton from her memories then maybe she would have figured it out sooner. They had all been wrong all along. Danny didn't hate them. He _did _want friends. He just thought he was protecting them by pushing them away. Of all the stupid, noble, idiotic.. Angry tears formed in her eyes and she brushed them away passionately with the back of her hand.

"Sam.. don't cry," he said weakly, still carefully maintaining his distance.

"You idiot," she whispered through clenched teeth.

"What?"

"I said, you _idiot!" _she cried, crossing the space between them in seconds. "You stupid, noble, jerk!" Every insult was punctuated as she pounded the sides of her fists into his chest. "Of all the dumb, stupid reasons!" He stumbled back but didn't bother to fight against her onslaught. "You let us think – god and you thought you were _protecting us?"_

She shoved against his shoulders, and he slid another step back in the slippery grass. "I thought I _lost you," _she yelled, slamming her palms into him. "And all this time you were just – " her voice broke then, and her fists gave up on him. "How could you let us think that about you?" she gasped hoarsely, tears fighting their way free. "All this time, you were a _hero."_

Her forehead fell against him in earnest, her hands clutching at the plaid green fabric of his shirt. "You are _so stupid,"_ she gasped raggedly against his collar.

"Hey… hey shh," he said quietly, and settled his arms tentatively around her shoulders. His cheek slowly rested on her head. "Shh.."

Her dismay only intensified, remembering how Phantom had comforted her the same way, when she was crying about Danny.. but they were the same, they were _always _the same. And the horrible things she'd said to Danny, about _himself_.. God and she had told him then that she used to be in love with him. Her cheeks burned as embarrassment was added to the slew of a thousand emotions running rampant inside her.

She pushed away from him suddenly as a horrible, horrible shock surged through her. "Oh my god," she groaned. "The _blood samples."_ The image of Danny walking to the GIW booth with his head hung low burned in her mind's eye. She could vividly picture someone in a white suit comparing Danny's blood sample to the sample they confiscated from Maddie, at this very moment maybe, some agent grinning nastily as a positive match was confirmed.

He looked down at her grimly and she backed away, out of his arms. "This can't be happening," she breathed. "This isn't happening."

"I'm sorry, Sam."

"What are we going to do_?" _she groaned.

He frowned and said softly, "I don't think there's anything we can do."

"Why? _Why_ did you let them take your blood today?"

"You think they wouldn't have noticed if I tried to get away?" he asked. "That would have definitely been suspicious. There's wasn't anything I could have done. This has been coming a long time, ever since they took my mom's research. The blood alerted them to the fact that there was something different about me, and they must have tortured it out of the Box Ghost that I was only a half ghost. After that it was really only a matter of time before they figured out who I was."

"But what are we going to _do?" _she repeated, more urgently. _How are we going to save you?_

_"_I'm working on it," he assured her. "Hey, com'ere.." and he tugged on her arm. "It'll be okay. The only thing that matters to me right now is that you don't hate me."

"You're such an idiot, you know that," she muttered, leaning into him. "I opposite-of-hate you."

"Mhmm," he hummed, nestling his head into the crook of her neck. "I love you too."

Despite everything, the corners of her mouth twitched into a smile.

"So.. I told Tucker too, just before I went to your house," he said suddenly.

"Wait, you what?"

He chuckled. "Yeah, sorry you weren't the first to find out. But I needed the moral support before I could muster up the courage to tell you. I needed someone to kick my ass into gear."

"What did he even say?" She pulled away from Danny's chest and saw that he was grinning.

"He was.. unbelievably cool about it. Seriously, I never deserved a friend as good as Tucker. He said he'd always had a suspicion that something was going on with me, something bigger than he could ever guess, and he'd always just hoped I'd tell him one day. Besides, he was already majorly suspicious after I freaked out in the cafeteria today… And.. I'm about to tell my parents, when I get home," he added.

"Them too?" she asked, before realizing it was a moot point.

"Sam.. _everyone_ is about to find out," he said quietly. "I just wanted my friends and family to hear it from me first."

She nodded numbly.

"I was wondering.. if you could be there with me," he asked hesitantly. "When I tell them."

She was nodding before she had even registered the weight of the request.

He breathed an obvious sigh of relief. "Thanks. You have no idea how much that means to me."

He pulled her in close again and didn't let go for a long minute. The crickets had started up again somewhere in the surrounding gloom. "We should go soon," he murmured. "I don't know how long I have." _Until the Guys in White make the positive match and figure out my name, _were the words between the lines.

Sam nodded weakly against his chest, but made no move to pull away.

"But first.. you wanna finish our walk?" he asked quietly.

She smiled, a small laugh escaping her at the absurdity of it. The walk they'd begun a lifetime ago, before her world flipped upside down. "Sure," she managed. So they strode away through the grass, and Sam's world consisted only of the little bubble they occupied, the lovely feeling of his warm fingers intertwined with hers. How she'd never dreamt his fingers could be warm, and yet now they were.

_Everything's about to change, _he had said, and the words weighed on her heart like stones.

Abruptly she turned and cut him off in their path, looking up searchingly into his dark eyes. He looked at her curiously as she wrapped her arms around his neck experimentally, fascinated by the unfamiliar warmth of it, and pulled him down into a kiss.

His body was so warm, but his breath was cold, it was familiar and cold. He tasted vaguely of snow and mints, like he always did.

If she still had any mental separation in her mind between Fenton and Phantom it evaporated now. With her eyes closed she couldn't see him. His eyes could have been glowing green or subtle blue; it wouldn't have made a difference. Against her body he was exactly the same as he had always been. Danny had been right; Phantom wasn't real. There was never any Phantom. It was just Danny, all along.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

x - x - x

Danny brought them down to earth and transformed back to human so they could walk the last few blocks to Fentonworks, wary of the potentiality of GIW in the area trying to track Danny's ectosignature. As they strolled down the moonlit sidewalk Sam couldn't help glancing at Danny again and again, as if he might have disappeared in a puff of smoke between one moment and the next. Everything was still surreal. She felt like she was walking in a dream.

Her emotions were still wrestling inside of her and she tried her best to just put them on hold for now so she could deal with them later. She felt impossibly angry with Danny, and yet she had already forgiven him at the same time. Everything in her was contradicting itself.

So she just forced her roiling thoughts into temporary submission, held onto Danny's hand, and tried to focus on the Here and Now.

"I guess I understand why you never wanted to show me your lair," she joked as they rounded a corner, bringing Fentonworks into full view. The neon blinking sign was the brightest thing on the block. "And all this time I was picturing an awesome scary ghost lair when it was just your _bedroom."_

A few months ago Danny had explained to her about ghosts and their lairs, when he was telling her about his many adventures in the Ghost Zone. She'd asked him if _he _had a lair.

_"Not in the Ghost Zone," he laughed._

_"You have one here then?" she wondered. "In Amity Park? Can you show me?" she asked excitedly._

_"Sorry, I wish I could take you there but I can't. Can't take anyone there. It's.. a ghost thing."_

_"Oh.. well is it super spooky?" she asked with a wicked grin._

_"Not as spooky as _your_ room," he joked, looking around at her gothic wall hangings and decorations._

"Yeah.. heh." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I can show it to you anytime now though, if you want.."

She looked over and saw him grinning down at her slyly. "Daniel James Fenton, are you propositioning me?" she joked with a fake scolding tone.

"I might be," he admitted with an amused shrug, as he paused on the sidewalk outside his house to kiss her.

"This is going to take some getting used to," she murmured as he pulled away. Danny Fenton, kissing her. Not something she would have ever thought could happen. When he looked worried she added hastily, "In a good way."

Danny chuckled, taking her hand and pulling her up the front steps to his door. "I don't really know what that means but I'll take it."

His key was in the lock but he stood there for a moment without turning it, his face screwed up in concentration. "I'm not sure how my parents are going to react," he said quietly. "I've been trying to butter them up for this for a long time, trying to make them understand all ghosts aren't evil. They're already questioning Phantom's nature, so that's a start. But I think there's a part of them that's going to have a really hard time accepting this." He looked up warily at Sam. "If for some reason they don't.. if they don't listen to me, if they just think I'm.. I'm a ghost, overshadowing their son or something.." He took a deep ragged breath. "If they decide to shoot before asking questions and I have to get away, will you try to explain for me?" His gaze fell back on the unturned key. "I know I'm asking a lot."

"Of course I'd explain, Danny. But.. they're your _parents. _I don't think you should worry. They're going to accept you no matter what."

He gave her a weary smile. "Thanks, Sam." Deep breath. "Here we go..."

The door creaked inward and Sam followed Danny slowly across the threshold into the small foyer. It was after midnight but all the lights in the house seemed to be on. Since Jazz was away in a dorm at APU that could only mean his parents were already awake.

"Mom?" Danny called tentatively, his voice echoing strangely in the silent house. "Dad?"

He peered around the corner to the left into the living room and Sam came around his other side, in time to see Jack and Maddie rising quickly to their feet from the sofa, staring at them both wide-eyed.

"_Danny_!" Maddie cried, her arms wrapped tightly around herself, in completely uncharacteristic insecurity.

Sam opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out – instead she heard the distinctive _click_ followed by the low rising whine of a charging ectogun, directly behind them. Sam's head whirled to see a man in a white suit aiming a gun at the back of Danny's head. Turning further she saw five more of the agents pouring out of the kitchen behind them, each leveling a gun at Danny's back.

"Daniel Fenton, you are being placed under arrest, in compliance with Ecto-Act number –"

"No one is placing my son under arrest!" came Jack's booming voice from across the room.

"Danny tell them!" Maddie pleaded, her eyes watering. "Tell them it's not true!"

Sam's head snapped back toward Danny's face so hard she might have gotten whiplash. He closed his eyes in resignation. _No! _she thought at him. _Stop it!_ There was a way out of this, there had to be.

Danny looked up at his parents sadly. "This isn't how I wanted you to find out," he managed quietly. His eyes found Sam's and they seemed to say _"remember what we just talked about." _

Inside, Sam was screaming.

"You can come quietly," snarled the bulky agent directly behind Danny, and nudged the back of Danny's skull with the gun for emphasis, "or not. Either way you're coming so why don't you make it easier on yourself and just cooperate."

Danny turned around slowly, staring with dead eyes straight into the barrel of the agent's ectogun. Six guns total were pointed directly at him. "I really don't want to hurt any of you," he said quietly, evenly. He was on direct eye level with the agent, and didn't seem in the slightest bit intimidated. "But I'm not coming with you."

Sam expected the agent to say something else snarky, to say anything, but he didn't. Instead he took the butt of his gun and rammed it into Danny's temple, sending him reeling into the wall of the foyer.

"Fuck," Danny spat as the agents rushed forward toward him, shoving past Sam like she wasn't even there. One of Danny's hands clutched his head but he raised the other and pointed his finger like a kid playing cowboy, sending jets of green light from his fingertip towards the three nearest agents, blasting the guns from their hands, and raised a glowing transparent shield at the last moment to stop two shots that were fired from the remaining guns.

"That's a Copper-Delta!" one of the agents was spewing rapidly, pressing a button on his earpiece. "Target A-1 resisting arrest! Raise the shield!"

The closest agent plowed straight through Danny's shield, which only blocked ectoplasm-based matter, and there was a hiss and a flash of light, followed by a strangled cry from Danny as his arms and legs jerked out of his control.

Sam's mind went blank when she realized Danny was being tazed, or possibly worse. Her fists collided with the offending agents' back, clawing at the hideously stainless white fabric. She might have been screaming obscenities but she wouldn't have known. Fat hands closed around her shoulders and yanked her away viciously, but almost as soon as they did Jack's enormous figure took Sam's place. With one hand he threw the agent across the room by his jacket, and Sam saw murder in his eyes. Jack Fenton, who normally reminded Sam of a bumbling manatee, now more closely resembled a pissed off grizzly bear.

"_Get back!" _Jack bellowed as another agent dove for Danny, who was now slumped to the floor, his legs crumpled beneath him, and when the agent didn't comply Jack slammed his back against the wall with both arms.

Sam tried to go toward Danny but the agent who had grabbed her was still holding on, and when she tried desperately to elbow him, stamp on his foot, nothing could free her. "_Danny, run!" _she yelled as the agents tried to maneuver around Jack, who looked ready to kill as he hovered over Danny's slumped body like a guard dog. Sam didn't even know where Maddie was anymore.

"Stand _down _citizen," one agent barked, the one Jack had thrown. He brushed off his jacket shoulders suavely, like he had only tripped, and pointed his gun at Jack. Those ectoguns couldn't kill humans but they could sure as hell injure them.

An agent closer to Jack and Danny jammed the tip of his gun into Jack's chest menacingly. The angry father loomed so tall over the agent that it would have been comical if it hadn't been so terrifying. "You're all lucky we aren't arresting you too, for harboring a criminal," the agent shouted. "If you stand in our way we _will _charge you with obstruction of justice! Or aiding and abetting an enemy of the state." His lip curled into a sickening smile as he pressed his gun further into Jack's chest, forcing him to take a step back. "Take your pick, Fenton."

"Nobody's taking my son," he growled, but his voice cracked and Sam's heart broke.

There was a flash behind Jack and a blue-white ring appeared around Danny as he struggled to regain his feet, but the light flickered and died without any effect.

"Stand _down!" _the agent Jack had thrown repeated. "Stand down or we will shoot!"

Jack didn't budge. If anything he shrank closer around Danny, his arms raised protectively.

"Dad," Danny coughed.

"You have about three seconds before we open fire," the agent warned, and the responding whine of several guns enforced his threat.

"_Jack!" _Maddie shouted, having finally found her voice, and Sam saw she was still frozen in utter disbelief by the couch.

"Dad!" Danny cried more urgently. "Dad _stop_." Another flash of white, but the rings still refused to travel, refused to trade Danny's rumpled green shirt for tough black fabric. Danny was on his feet now, leaning heavily against the wall.

_What the hell did that shock do to him?_ Sam wondered wildly.

Danny screwed up his face in painful concentration, and as she watched his arms flickered out of sight for a moment before coming back.

"ONE SECOND!" the agent screamed.

Danny grunted through clenched teeth with the effort as his body shifted into semi-transparency - something Sam never saw him do often as Phantom, because he didn't need to often. Sometimes she forgot that he could make himself intangible without making himself fully invisible, an act which required less power. A wave of relief washed over her when she saw the subtle change happen, and he thrust himself backwards through the wall in an instant.

It took the GIW agents a few stunned seconds to jump into action.

"Alerting Unit Twelve, target has vacated the premises. Be on full alert, repeat, full alert!"

They all flew past Jack without sparing him a second glance, bursting out the front door onto the steps below. Sam was close behind, her legs moving without her permission. When she got outside her heart stopped. There was a complete blockade of GIW vehicles lining the street in every direction, and they were probably on the back side of the street as well. Over a hundred agents were standing there, armed and dangerous. Sam could hear the thudding rotors of a helicopter overhead. And shimmering in the air thirty feet above them, cascading downward in a dome, was the unmistakable greenish tint of a ghost shield. Beyond the shield neighbors had emerged from their houses, standing in shock on their steps and on the sidewalk, craning their necks to see the source of the all the ruckus.

And then she saw Danny, just standing there at the edge of the sidewalk just beyond the front steps, washed in the blinking colorful light of the 'Fentonworks' sign. He was looking out across the lines of agents, his arms hanging limply. Just standing there. She could no longer partially see through him. The intangibilty didn't seem to have lasted long, with whatever they did to him with that shock.

Danny turned around with just enough time to catch Sam's wide eyes before the agents descending from the steps were on top of him.

One slammed into him, bringing him to the ground brutishly, and Sam's stomach turned over as the side of his face connected with the sidewalk. He cried out defiantly and another white ring fizzled around his midsection. It split, unlike his previous attempts, and crackled outward from his waist sporadically, sending out wild white sparks. But the rings fizzled and faded, leaving him still dreadfully, terrifyingly human.

_No! No no no no!_

Sam heard two sharp gasps and knew that Jack and Maddie must be at her back. She didn't care enough to look. She didn't care about anything at all.

An agent who wasn't pinning Danny down face first on the pavement jerked Danny's arms up behind his back and forced a pair of glowing handcuffs around his wrists. Danny hissed in pain as they clicked into place.

Sam didn't remember descending the steps, but suddenly someone had twisted her arm around her back powerfully and she yelped in pain as she was forced to stop moving toward Danny.

"So is this the part where you tell me I have the right to remain silent?" Danny drawled sarcastically. He was grinning against the pavement like a last act of defiance, red streaks across his teeth, blood smearing from his parted lips onto the grey ground.

"Actually, no_," _the agent with the cuffs spat as he rose to his feet. "You don't have Miranda Rights, you filthy ghost."

"American citizens have rights," the agent who had pinned him said, and hauled Danny to his feet by jerking at his shirt. "Humans have rights. Ghosts don't have _anything."_

"Danny is a _human being!" _Sam screamed, calling all attention to herself suddenly, struggling even more desperately to free herself from her retainer. "You sick fucks, he's a person! You can't do this!"

"Oh would you look, at, that! And what a small world it is! It's the little smart mouth." The agent who had pinned Danny took off his glasses and appraised Sam coldly with his eyes. She realized with a sickening jolt that it was the same exact agent who had taken her blood sample. "Actually, girl, Daniel Fenton is _not _a human being. And we have this document right here," he pulled a piece of paper from his jacket pocket, "that says so. This ghost is no longer classified as a human, and is no longer protected by any rights whatsoever."

Rage flooded her. She was seeing red.

"You can't do this!" she shrieked again, and struggled with renewed vigor as they shoved Danny forward, ushering him toward the line of white GIW labeled vans.

"Sam!" he called desperately over his shoulder, spraying flecks of blood from his mouth as they shoved him forward again, and he stumbled but he still tried to look back. "Keep an eye out for me, okay? Keep an eye out!"

Tears blurred her vision and she was nodding even though she had no idea what he meant, but she realized he couldn't see her so she tried to shout "Okay" but it came out as a hoarse, strangled whisper. She finally managed to shout "I will!" as they herded Danny into the open doors of the back of a van.

The agent restraining her let her go suddenly, and then they were all retreating, boarding into their vehicles as if nothing had happened, as if the world had not just come crashing down.

But it had.

Distantly Sam heard someone crying behind her and it might have been Maddie. Sam didn't look. The GIW ghost shield evaporated away and the white vans tore down the street in a long uniform line, leaving behind a broken family. Sam staggered forward into the street as she watched them go. Dimly she was aware of the neighbors, their unabashed stares. She couldn't feel her legs moving. She didn't feel her bare skin slam into the asphalt as she collapsed to her knees, still staring in disbelief at the empty corner where the last van had vanished.

It couldn't have been more than five minutes since Danny had first turned his key in the lock of the front door. No more than half an hour since Sam had learned the truth about Danny.

And now he was gone.

She didn't know how long she sat there in the middle of the road, the pebbly surface pressing sharply into her legs and the palms of her hands.

But as she stared at the tall shadowed buildings at the end of the lane she thought she heard a faint echo, like a distant lion's roar rolling up from the bottom of a canyon. It was faint but it seemed to glide across the buildings around her, reverberating on all the dark windowpanes. The smallest of tremors went through the ground beneath her, and loose crumbs of asphalt scattered around her jittered against the ground.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

x - x - x

Sam stared blankly at the plate which had been set in her lap by Maddie. A handful of strawberries and a slice of toast. Belatedly she looked up to thank her but Maddie had already moved away back into the kitchen.

Jack had disappeared upstairs hours ago. Jazz sat silent and still at the other end up the couch, her hands clasped together in her lap so tightly her knuckles were turning white. She'd been woken in the dead of night to her parents' distressed phone call, and had driven the usual forty minute drive in twenty to get here. Tucker had been awoken by Sam's distressed phone call. No one needed to ask him to come – he was already on his way by the time Sam hung up. He was now sitting on Sam's immediate left.

A glance at the wall clock told Sam it was now 7:06am. No one had slept. No one had spoken in hours. They were all pretending to not dwell on the horrifying things the GIW would have in store for Danny. Pretending they weren't all desperately wracking their brains for some sort of plan.

_Will you try to explain for me? _Danny had asked. And Sam had kept her promise. After the white vans vanished Sam numbly followed Danny's parents back in the house and attempted to explain to the best of her ability what had happened to their son. She spoke robotically. It felt like it was someone else telling the story. Not till she was telling it did she realize how little she truly knew of it. There were still so many questions she'd never gotten the chance to ask him, so many stories he never got to tell. So many explanations he was never able to give. But any anger she'd still held at Danny had been forcibly punched out of her.

In fact, every emotion had been punched out of her. Right now her toast was probably feeling more than she was.

Tucker let out a sharp gasp beside her and Sam glanced over. He let his PDA fall from his hands into his lap and silently reached for the remote, clicking on the television in front of them.

"Tucker, what are you.." her half-formed question died as Tucker stopped on the Channel 11 news station.

A frizzy-haired anchor was currently on screen. "_..approximately 1:00am this morning, or roughly six hours ago."_

There was a picture superimposed on the newsroom to the upper left of the woman. It was a picture of Danny Fenton, side by side with a picture of Danny Phantom.

Sam glared murderously at Tucker and tried to swipe the remote. She did not, and neither did anyone else for that matter, want to watch the news coverage of Danny's capture.

"Wait!" Tucker urged, and turned up the volume.

_"…no casualties, but sources say six government agents are currently in intensive care at Amity Southwest Hospital. This information has not yet been confirmed. We're now going live on the scene. Jordan, what does it look like over there?"_

The image abruptly shifted to a city street. There stood an anchor whose eyes kept flitting from the camera back to the scene around him. There was an enormous crack running down the asphalt like a fault line, and a white van had tipped into it and crashed. It had an unmistakable 'GIW' logo on the side. Two more crashed vans were piled against it, dented like aluminum foil, shattered glass littering the ground. Beyond that another van had tipped on its side, and yet another had lodged itself into the side of a building. The buildings themselves around the scene had all had the windows blown out. Lampposts were toppled into the buildings, a blue mailbox was lodged through a splintered wooden door. Several large trucks were currently on the scene trying to pry the wreckage of the vehicles apart.

At this point Jazz rose brusquely to her feet. "Mom!" she squeaked. "_Dad!"_

_"Well, Jen, it looks as if a tornado hit. That's for sure. Unfortunately the agents on the scene have all refused to comment, other than to ask anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of the ghost to come forward. I know our viewers at home are all as shocked as we are about the night's events."_

Sam dimly remembered the tremor from the night before. That faint echo that shook the windows around her.

The image of the anchorwoman returned suddenly, bringing back the photos of Danny as well. "_Well_ , _you heard it all here, folks. Our own ghostly hero Danny Phantom has been living as a human among us, under the name of Daniel James Fenton. The ghost eluded capture last night by the GIW and his whereabouts are currently unknown. We have a call on line two from a 'Mary Gibbons'.. Hello, Mary…"_

Sam had stopped listening. Everyone was staring in shock at the television screen, and Maddie broke down suddenly into tears, gasping what sounded like "oh thank god" against Jack's shoulder. The news was showing the scene of the accident again, but only one thing was registering with Sam: Danny escaped.

Suddenly she couldn't bear to be here anymore. The presence of everyone else in the room was suffocating.

Her legs carried her to the stairwell and up the steps. Nobody was following her. She thought maybe she was headed for the upstairs bathroom, that maybe she'd splash some cool water on her face. The doorknob to his bedroom was creaking under her grasp before she realized where she was.

Danny had explained all about ghosts' lairs a long time ago; how when a ghost chooses a place to inhabit in the Ghost Zone the place will absorb their ambient energy. How the energy there adapts to them, how it helps them heal when they've been injured. How the temperature drops due to the extended presence of the ghost. Hell, her own bedroom had even begun growing colder, just from Danny's constant visits.

So when she stepped into his room and a shiver went down her spine she wasn't very surprised. As she stepped further in she was hit by the creepy prickling feeling that someone was watching her. No one was. Maybe it was just a symptom of a being a lair.

But it wasn't a lair. Not really. Other than the frigid temperature and the lurking unnerving feeling, it was just an average eighteen-year-old's bedroom. The wall behind his bed was still plastered in the same NASA posters it had been the last time she was in here, over two years ago. There were dirty clothes strewn across the floor, some piled on top of his messed-up bedspread. A stack of games had been knocked over on the floor in front of a TV, a controller sat next to two empty cans of root beer and a Nintendo. She paused by the Nintendo and with a start she realized that the game currently in play was Super Smash Bros. A weary smile tugged at her. No wonder he was so good at that stupid game. Her smile faded when she realized that Danny was never that good at it before his accident. Her and Tucker used to gang up on his character as a joke. He must have had a lot of time alone to practice. He must have been really bored and lonely, with no one to talk to…

Out of the corner of her eye she thought she saw a flickering green firefly dart away. When she turned it was gone. She still felt like she was being watched. No wonder Danny stopped letting his friends and family into his room long ago.

A pile of records sat on his desktop, on top of an old record player she knew had belonged to Jack a long time ago. Glancing through the pile she recognized many of Danny's favorites. Music they'd listened to together on many dark nights, music she'd fallen asleep to often these past few months. The one in the record player currently was a _Grateful Dead _album. She set the needle on the edge and the soft sound of smooth guitar drifted out across the bedroom. This was one of the first albums Danny had shown her, that first night he'd shown up outside her window. Some of his favorite songs were on here.

She shoved dirty clothes away and took their place at the edge of the bed. Another green firefly swirled at the edge of her vision and disappeared when she tried to look at it. She hugged herself, trembling against the cold air, and tried not to look at the framed photo on his desk, the one of herself, Danny, and Tucker at the midnight release of the DOOM video game.

The thing that snapped her out of her sulk was the guitar. It was a decorated wooden acoustic, leaning against the corner by his closet door, and the first thing she thought was _What the hell is a guitar doing in Danny's room_? The answer was obvious, and for the first time since Danny had been captured her emotions forced themselves to the surface of her mind.

She was angry. Angry that Danny had obviously learned to play guitar sometime between freshman year and now and she didn't even know it. Angry because here was physical evidence that Danny still had secrets from her. That she didn't know everything about him.

And she was confused, that her gut reaction had been to squash and ignore that anger.

The realization dawned on her that she'd been smothering all her emotions in regards to Danny since his capture, that she had forgone all her anger at him in her grief over him. What was that all about? Was she _grieving? _She actually stood up in the wake of the revelation, nearly slapped herself over her stupidity. She was _not _going to grieve over Danny. He was not dead! And in light of the most recent news, he hadn't even been captured.

So no, she was not going to grieve.

She was going to be angry as hell with him, the same she had been before. She was also going to love him, the same as before. She was still afraid for him, and she was still confused, but she would feel all of these things at once and it would be fine. And when she saw him again she would slap him and then she would hug him and it would be fine. And she would have time, eventually, to learn everything about him. Because she would see him again. She _would._

A couple green sparks of light danced at the corners of her periphery vision as she retreated from Danny's room.

Neither Jack or Maddie made any effort to convince Tucker or Sam to go to school that day.

They were all back to sitting in silence in the living room when the loud knock came at the front door. They had all completely forgotten about the agency's scheduled appearance for 11:00am. They were irritatingly prompt, as usual.

Maddie shouted a string of insults at them all the way down the lab, with Jazz trying to console and restrain her the whole way. Sam fought a battle in her brain, deciding whether it was worth it to try and convince the GIW what a mistake it would be to deactivate the portal. Her mouth opened and snapped closed several times before she gave it up as a lost cause. Why would they trust her? She was going on the word of a _ghost._

In the end they all watched, powerless, as the glowing green spirals of ectoplasm in the portal doorway slowed and faded away for the last time, the portal powering down with a sad electronic whine. Jack gritted his teeth and gripped the edges of the lab table so hard it began to dent as agents carried out whichever pieces of lab equipment they'd gotten warrants for. It turned out it was quite a lot of them. The only equipment left untouched were the weapons, probably because the GIW had enough of their own, and would never admit that the Fentons' far outclassed theirs; they took most of the study-related devices. They took with them the computer terminal which operated and controlled the portal, rendering it completely useless and irreparable without a new system.

Not that it mattered anyway, Sam thought. The hole they dug as soon as they powered down the portal could never be filled in.

At first, the GIW were hailed as heroes. The town finally gave them the credit they'd always strived for. The Ghost Watch news program was dormant for the first time in years. The Amity Park ghost attacks had vanished abruptly, and the GIW took every opportunity to broadcast this as their doing. The media praised them, and so did the local government. The mood of Amity Park at large was celebratory.

But the mood at school was somber and desolate.

The first week after Danny's disappearance was eye-opening. There was a shared feeling of remorse and shame among the student body and the teachers, almost like the feeling that happens when a student commits suicide. It's the feeling that says _we should have known. _

Sometimes people stopped Sam and Tucker and gave them their condolences. She was surprised people even remembered they'd once been friends. Once Sam saw Paulina crying into her locker. She wasn't sure why, but she didn't bother to ask.

That very first week was when she began to notice. When she went home the first night they were already there. A white van parked on her street corner. She didn't give it much thought in the beginning. But by the end of the week there were white vans parked all along her street. She flipped off each the tinted windows as she walked past.

When Tucker mentioned the vans along his street, she knew it wasn't a coincidence. They were being watched. A visit to the Fentons' confirmed that they too were being watched. White vans everywhere, keeping an eye on Danny's friends and family in case he were to return home.

Like that was even remotely an option for him.

During the second week, Sam looked sadly at the unlit candles in her window. She contemplated what it would feel like to never light one again. She kept feeling her cellphone buzzing in her pocket at random moments. She'd take it out quickly and realized it had never buzzed.

Of course, Danny couldn't possibly call them. Well, he could. He could potentially call them and be long gone before the GIW could trace and arrive at his location. (Because she had no doubt they had all their phones tapped, especially if they were openly spying on their houses.) But she remembered Danny's reaction when Jack tried to protect him. He didn't want any of them in trouble, especially legally binding trouble. He wouldn't call, because he wouldn't want to make any of them accomplices. Sam knew him well enough to know that.

But still, she couldn't help feeling her phone buzz when it wasn't buzzing. Couldn't help hoping to hear his voice.

There was still no sign of him on the news, no anonymous tips called in to the GIW or the media.

The second week was when the reports first began to roll in.

A violent ghost attack at a hotel in Tallahassee, Florida. The sunshine state was in shock. There had never been an attack of that magnitude before. It was brief but left a lot of damage.

Two days later there was news of a ghost wreaking havoc in Manhattan. It made international headlines. The ghost rampaged for several hours on live news before disappearing in a flash of blue light. No one saw how it happened. It wasn't captured on film. But Sam knew. And several eyewitnesses insisted they had seen the infamous ghost boy.

When the third attack happened it was in Baltimore. It was a nonviolent ghost but it terrified citizens in their own homes all over the city for nearly a day before reports abruptly stopped being called in.

People began to put two and two together. No one was quite sure how or why, but they connected the absence of attacks in Amity Park with the sudden spark of attacks across the country. The GIW vehemently denied any correlation.

A month went by, and Amity Park remained untouched by ghosts. Meanwhile, cities across the country were getting their first real taste of the lifestyle Amity Park had lived under for three and a half years. The GIW opened several new branches in the wake of the development, and were dispatched out to the far corners of America. But the attacks were so sporadic and unpredictable that the GIW almost never got there in time.

Meanwhile, the attacks were still become less and less severe somehow.

Danny had so far managed to avoid being captured on camera, but endless hordes of eyewitnesses spewed stories for the camera. Telling of his heroism. Speaking out against the GIW. Sam swelled with rightful pride whenever there was word of his involvement, which was becoming more and more frequent. There were attacks every few days and soon there wasn't an attack without rumor of Danny Phantom's involvement. Sam wondered how he was possibly getting across the country so quickly. How he seemed to know in advance where the attacks were going to be.

At Casper High the students talked about him constantly, trading the latest rumors of his whereabouts. People pestered Sam and Tucker for information, they were sure they must know his plans, his location. They would glare at them until they went away.

In late April Tucker opened his news app on his PDA and passed it to Sam covertly during fifth period. The headline said _A Message from Danny Phantom? _Underneath it was a picture of what looked like the inside of an airport terminal. Next to the opening in the wall was Danny's logo spray painted in white, having dripped slightly as it dried. But what really drew the eye in the photo was the giant chunk of ice sitting on the carpeted floor under the graffiti. The white logo _could_ have been dismissed as graffiti, just some fan showing support, if not for the ice sculpture. Who else could have done that but Danny? She leaned in closer to the screen, and realized with a start that it was a sculpture of a _candle. _Complete with the semblance of dripping wax on the edges, and a twisting 'flame' at the top.

She didn't bother reading the article. There was only one reason Danny would have done that.

_"Sam!" he called desperately over his shoulder. They shoved him forward again and he stumbled but he still tried to look back. "Keep an eye out for me, okay? Keep an eye out!"_

He was saying 'Here I am, Sam. I'm okay.' Her heart fluttered for a moment before deflating. Of course, he wouldn't be there long. He was too smart for that. He was probably _already_ gone. In the background of the picture she could see white tuxedoes milling about.

The candle was their signal, but he'd only used it so Sam knew he was okay. It couldn't be an invitation. Not this time.

But the next week she looked on in disbelief as the news displayed yet another patch of white graffiti of the 'DP' logo onto another airport terminal, this time in North Carolina. _"The same terminal – number 12.." _the news anchor noted. Another giant ice candle. The anchors puzzled over what the message could mean.

Sam told no one except for Tucker.

And she couldn't help feeling like the Danny was sending her more than the message 'I'm okay.' She couldn't help feeling like it _was _an invitation, and she just had to figure out how to answer it.


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen**

x - x - x

Sam wasn't sure of her motives when she asked Maddie to help her with target practice. She had been spending a lot of time at the Fentons' since Danny's disappearance, and thought maybe Maddie could use something to take her mind off things, since their research had been halted. Maddie had been a little curious as to why, since the attacks on Amity Park had stopped. Why would Sam _need _target practice anymore?

Sam didn't really have an answer for that.

If anything it was therapeutic, for both of them. Jack wasn't long in joining them. Soon it became a sort of nightly tradition, whenever Sam wasn't working at Skulk and Lurk. Sam grew familiar with the different types of offensive and defensive patented Fenton weapons, blasting away targets in the lab downstairs or in their backyard. After target practice they would watch the news, scanning for any hint of Danny.

Without knowing why, Sam stopped spending her money. She stopped depositing it in her bank account. A pile of cash accumulated in her desk, and she pretended she wasn't saving up for any purpose. She pretended she wasn't silently preparing for something to happen.

Over April and May Danny was spotted more and more frequently. He was caught on camera battling Skulker in northern Arizona. Someone snapped a picture of him dozing in a tree in Portland, Oregon. The GIW arrived at Danny's fourth ice candle to find a crowd of avid Danny Phantom fans protesting the GIW's search for him. There was nearly a riot in the airport as the GIW attempted to take the sculpture from the fans.

All across the country copycat graffiti artists left white DP's on the sides of buildings, in the middle of streets. Pictures of them flooded the internet. Hundreds of people started 'support Danny Phantom' Facebook pages.

The news reported on Danny's heroism, and then delivered the GIW's pleas for information about him with the air of people who were only doing it because they had to.

Every mention of him made her less and less worried for his safety, because the GIW were always ten steps behind him, never remotely close to capturing him. By the time they got to the scene of ghost attacks he would be long gone. He seemed to move from city to city with light speed. Someone reported seeing him in Salt Lake City one May morning, and there was a ghost attack later that day. It was like he knew.

It dawned on Sam that maybe he _did _know where the attacks would happen before they did. The memory floated back of his explanation of the portals, how he'd said there was a map that showed where all the natural portals opened up. Could he have gotten his hands on that map?

As May drew to a close Sam's heart was aching. There were eight different pictures of ice candles saved on her cell phone. All in front of 'terminal twelve' in eight different airports. She would scroll through them several times a day, trying desperately to draw the connection she knew she was supposed to draw. What was Danny trying to tell her?

Graduation snuck up on her so quickly it was surreal.

When it came it was like a slap in the face, a cold splash of water. Her parents yelled at her one night when she got home late from 'target practice' that she needed to get her head down out of the clouds, and reminded her she was attending APU in the fall. Sam could no longer wrap her head around the possibility of going to college. College seemed like a dream. Danny wouldn't be able to go to college. He'd never be able to get a degree and go work for NASA like he'd always wanted.

At her graduation ceremony she cheered loudly for Tucker when he walked across the stage in his cap and gown, and numbly accepted her own diploma when it was her turn to walk. After he called the last student in their class – "Reagan Zoroaster" – Lancer shocked everyone.

"I'd like us all to take a moment to remember those of us who could not be here with us today, for this important occasion in a young person's life."

There was a collective sigh from the crowd as they registered his meaning. No students from their class had died in the whole four years. Lancer could only mean one person.

"And I'd like us to take a moment of silence for the sacrifices that person made time and time again for their fellow students during their time here." After a long moment, Lancer cleared his throat once more. "We can only hope that in the days to come, that we will see a change around us, in the attitude of our government towards people who are different. He made the world a better place for us, so we must try to do the same for him."

That night there were a hundred different graduation parties going on. But Sam sat alone with Tucker in the grass in the park, looking up at the night sky.

"Danny left another message today," Tucker told her, pulling out his PDA to show her the picture of an ice sculpture at an airport in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Terminal twelve, again.

"Yeah, I know," Sam sighed. She had already saved it to her phone earlier.

"I can't shake the feeling that there's a pattern here that we're missing," he said, scrolling through his own collection of the photos.

"There _is _a pattern we're missing," Sam insisted.

"I just don't get what he could be trying to tell us," Tucker wondered. "Why does he only do it in some cities and not others? It's like he wants us to know where he's been. But then why wouldn't he put them in _every _city he's been? It just doesn't make sense."

Sam picked idly at the tufts of grass. Several rogue fireworks went off in the distance.

"And here, this is what confuses me the most. The second one was in Raleigh, North Carolina where there was a ghost attack. Then he was spotted in Oklahoma and Texas at two other ghost attacks, before going back and leaving the third sign in Charlotte, North Carolina. Then he was spotted at several ghost attacks in Georgia before going back and leaving the fifth sign in Rockhill, South Carolina. There weren't _any _ghost attacks in Charlotte or Rockhill when he was there. Why would he go there at all? Why leave signs there?"

"I don't know Tucker." She had already spent so much time wracking her mind about this that her brain hurt just thinking about it.

"Look here," Tucker said, and showed her a map of the USA which had points plotted all over it. "I've been plotting out the alleged sightings of him, and he's been _everywhere. _If what you think about that Infi-map thinga-ma-jig is right, then that makes sense. But what about this?" He scrolled to the next picture, which was a map with a lot less points on it. "When you plot out only the cities where he left a sign, it looks more coherent, like it's following a line.. I don't know, do you think he could be trying to tell us where he's going to be next?"

"But how could we possibly know what city would be next?" Sam asked, gazing intently at the points on the map.

"That's the million dollar question," Tucker answered, zooming in at the first few points of the map.

"Norfolk, Virginia… Raleigh, North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina.. Man, he went all across Carolina didn't he?"

Something kicked up like dust in the back of Sam's brain.

"Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans…"

"Tucker, what did you just say?"

"Uh.. New Orleans?"

"No you said…" …_and on across Ca-aroli-i-ine._

Sam's hands dropped to her sides.

"Oh my god," she breathed.

Suddenly she was back in Danny's bedroom on the first day he was gone. Listening to that Grateful Dead record. She was back in her bedroom in the dark on the first night Danny Phantom had come to her window, as he was looking up yet another song on youtube.

_"This is one of my all-time favorites. You'll love this one," he said. "I don't know how I know, but you will."_

_It was a lighthearted song about travelling. And she _did _love it._

_Where he lounged upside down he tapped his foot lightly against the ceiling along with the beat, and she demanded that he play the song again once it was over._

"Oh my god," Sam repeated, louder, and grabbed Tucker's PDA from him.

"Hey!" he protested, as Sam pulled up youtube and typed "Promised Land – Grateful Dead" into the search engine. It was so simple, so genius. The GIW could never possibly have figured this out.

Tucker stopped trying to snag his PDA back when the lyrics started playing.

_"I left my home in Norfolk, Virginia, California on my mind.. Straddled that greyhound it rode me past Raleigh and on across Caroline.."_

Tucker's jaw dropped. "No way," he muttered.

They listened in silence to the whole song.

"It's one of his favorite songs," Sam said numbly when it was over. "I can't _believe_ I didn't figure it out sooner…"

"Danny.. is a complete _genius!" _Tucker exclaimed, grabbing his PDA back and pulling up the map again. "I never would have thought of that! Do you know what this means?"

"It means.. we know exactly where he's leaving the next sign," Sam realized. The next city after Albuquerque in the song.

_Swing low sweet chariot, come down easy, taxi to the terminal zone.. Cut your engines and cool your wings and let me make it to the telephone.. Los Angeles, give me Norfolk, Virginia.. Tidewater four-ten-o-nine.. Tell the folks back home, this is the promised land calling and the poor boy is on the line._

"Danny _is _a genius," she admitted. "Tucker, we have to go. We have to be there when he gets to Los Angeles. We might not get another chance – that's the last city on the list. Who knows how we'd find him again!"

Tucker looked at her for a long moment before letting out a heavy sigh. "Sam.. _you_ have to go."

"What?" she said in surprise. "What do you mean? Tucker, you have to come with me."

"Sam… you heard what Lancer said today at graduation. Somebody has to make this world a better place for people like Danny. GIW approval ratings are down by like fifty percent but we're still gonna need some new people in office to really change the attitude toward ghosts. This is a battle Danny can't fight with force… it's gonna take _finesse._"

"Tucker, what are you saying?"

He shrugged. "I've been considering going into politics for a long time, and this just gave me the reason I needed. Danny needs me, I think. I can help him more this way than I could by finding him."

"Tucker…" she looked at him sadly, unsure what to say. She couldn't imagine parting from him. They'd been best friends as long as Sam could remember.

"Don't worry, Sam. We'll keep in contact. I'll figure something out."

"But they're watching me, too, Tucker. As soon as I take off across the country they're going to assume I'm with Danny. I'll be as wanted as he is. How will we talk to you?"

"We'll figure it out. I'm a tech whiz, don't you forget that. We can get disposable cell phones to start with, until I think of something better."

Sam nodded, her gaze drifting back into the dark sky.

"So, you're really going?" he asked quietly.

It was funny, she hadn't even considered the possibility of _not _going. She realized belatedly everything it would mean for her, if she joined Danny in his banishment. She'd be missing out on college, she'd be on the run too. But did any of that matter? She'd be with Danny. She'd be helping him, helping the country, in a way that no one else could. She'd always been the type of person that wanted to help – she volunteered at her local food bank, she went to protests against immoral legislation, she wanted to join the peace corps after college, she'd always had plans to save the world one day… After all it was really a shitty place.

But Danny, he was _already_ saving the world.

She remembered the pain in his voice when he had said, _"I was so focused on the obsession of protecting everyone that I almost forgot what it was like.. being human."_

The country needed Danny, but Danny needed her. He needed a friend. To help him, to be there with him, to remind him that he was human. That he wasn't _just _a hero. She could help the world by helping Danny. It was a job specifically tailored for her.

And suddenly, it didn't seem bad at all that she would be missing out on college. After all, who needed college when you had a job offer straight out of high school?

Maybe they would go to college together someday. When the government finally got their heads out of their asses.

Sam got home that night and realized there wasn't much she had to do to prepare. She'd already been preparing for this subconsciously for weeks. She took the stack of the past couple paychecks' worth of cash and stuffed it into her purse. She pulled the purple duffel bag out of her closet that was already stuffed with clothes. After a moment of contemplation she put her laptop in there too. She looked out the window at her brand new little black Prius, the graduation present from her parents. It was the most useful thing they'd ever bought her. On top of that, she couldn't believe they'd gone with black over pink. For a moment she almost felt bad for leaving them with no explanation. Not like they would understand anyway, or forgive her.

She contemplated taking her car and then sighed in resignation. It was so traceable. There was no way she could take it. Not with the GIW watching her so closely. They'd track them down lightning quick if they were in her car.

So on second thought, she emptied her duffel bag and stuffed a small portion of the stuff into her backpack. She wouldn't take anything she couldn't carry on her back.

She went to her bathroom to grab her toothbrush and shampoo, and when she got back to her room she jumped out of her skin with surprise. Her grandma was sitting at the edge of her bed.

"Grandma.. what are you doing in here?" she asked feebly.

Her grandma just smiled that knowing smile she always had. "Oh, I just wanted to say goodbye before my little Sammy left," she replied.

"Grandma..." she said sadly. Sam didn't know what to say.

"Don't worry dear," she said softly. "I'm not here to try and talk you out of it. You and I both know there's no changing your mind once you've got a goal. You've been packing slowly for the past month. I only wanted to ask you to be safe and be careful."

Sam gingerly sat down next to the woman on the edge of the bed. "I will, Grandma."

"And tell that Fenton boy to take good care of my granddaughter," she added, with a sudden scolding edge to her tone. "Or else I will come back and haunt him once my old heart finally gives."

"Grandma!" she said, her cheeks suddenly burning.

"Oh hush, child, I'm not blind you know." Her know-it-all smile was back with a vengeance, that telltale twinkle in her eye. "Oh and one last thing. I brought you a going away gift." She pulled a fat envelope out from behind her back and Sam took it warily. When she opened it she gasped. It was filled to the brim with money.

"Grandma, I can't accept this!"

"Oh yes you can," she said harshly. "If you don't I'll give it to your parents to remodel your bedroom. I'll ask them to make it pink." At Sam's horrified face she said, "Oh hush, Sammy. I was planning on giving you this money anyway, so that you could move out into your own place for the start of your college career. It belongs to you already. Even if you'll need to spend it on hotel rooms instead of apartment rent… or whatever you may need it for," she added with a wink.

"Grandma.. I can't possibly thank you enough," Sam breathed. There had to be thousands of dollars in here. She wrapped her frail grandma in a tight hug, and put all the words she couldn't say into it.

Her last stop on the way to the airport was Fentonworks.

She gave them one of the three disposable cell phones she had bought. Tucker had one, and the other was in her pocket. She promised she would let them know if she found their son. Jack made her pack an ectogun, promising her it would be fine as long as she checked it into baggage. Sam allowed herself for the first time to think that she'd had something real in mind with all that target practice. That she'd meant to use the skills.

Maddie made her pack a thermos, even though Danny had his own already. "Maybe he can fix this one like he fixed that other one," Maddie insisted. "If you're going to be around Danny you'll likely be around ghosts, and I don't like sending you into that mess unprotected."

The two of them looked at her sadly and trapped her in an enormous hug that lasted for an eternity. When Sam broke away she realized they were both tearing up.

"I'll call you when I find him," Sam promised. Before she left she glanced at the stairway, and she was going upstairs before she could think it through. She didn't know what she meant to grab, or if she meant to grab anything. Scanning around the room she saw…

The guitar was in the same spot in the corner of the room, staring at her. She grinned at it slyly and dug up a hard leather case from the back of Danny's pigsty closet.

Jack was right. Her backpack checked in without any problems – probably because the ectogun wasn't _really _a gun. Nobody looked twice at the mechanical thermos in there either.

The flight was long and arduous. She dozed on and off but never truly got to sleep. She was starkly aware of the fact that she had stepped boldly out of her life, and things would quite possibly never be the same for her again. She was also terrified the GIW knew she had gotten on a plane, and would be there waiting for her as soon as she arrived. But no white suits greeted her at the terminal when she stopped over in Denver to catch her next flight. No white suits were there when she stepped off the plane in the airport in Los Angeles.

After picking up her backpack from baggage claim she stopped to buy a coffee from a shop along the strip of restaurants. She rested the guitar next to the stool as she took a seat at the counter, blowing the steam off the brim of her cup. The news playing on the television caught her eye. It was live coverage showing Danny Phantom fighting off a towering black figure in some city in South Dakota. She smiled at the television, knowing that she had gotten here in time. Meaning, before Danny. She didn't know how long it would take Danny to get here. Sometimes a whole week went by between his signs. But she would be here when he got here.

"He's some kinda hero, isn't he?" the short-haired barista said, noting Sam's smile.

"Yeah," she agreed lightly, sipping the foam from the top of her cup.

"It's really a shame, the way they hunt him."

Sam could only nod. She was only half-listening. Her attention was still on the screen. A woman wearing a shirt with the 'DP' logo was now speaking enthusiastically with the reporter, her arms waving wildly.

"Someday it'll change, though," the barista muttered. "You know, I don't think it's just that Phantom that's good. I think there's a lot of ghosts that aren't evil. I watch the coverage a lot. A lot of the ghosts that Phantom captures aren't even trying to hurt nobody."

Sam blinked at the girl, who was smiling back at her. "If only everyone was as smart as you," Sam said genuinely.

"They'll get there," the girl said with a wink.

Sam found terminal twelve with relative ease.

She settled into one of the thinly padded gray chairs, clutching her backpack on her lap, the guitar case resting against her shins. People came and went around her, and the world blurred. Four flights came and left before she fell asleep, strewn across four empty seats, her hand clutched around the guitar handle protectively. The time when she woke up was four in the morning. An attendant was asking her if she was lost.

"No, just waiting for someone," she assured them.

The next day she ate all three meals at that coffee shop.

"You're still here?" the short-haired barista asked. She was looking at Sam curiously as she nibbled on a blueberry scone at the counter.

Sam looked at her and, without knowing what to say, shrugged. She bit into her scone further.

"You're a Phantom fanatic aren't you?"

Sam stopped mid-chew and raised an eyebrow at her.

The girl laughed at pointed at Sam's chest. Sam glanced down and realized she was still wearing her DP necklace. She shrugged again.

"I saw you sleeping over there at terminal twelve yesterday, you know."

Sam peered at her around the big espresso machine and the girl just winked at her again.

"There's a lot of Phantom fans hanging around terminal twelves these days," the girl went on. "Hoping to catch a glimpse of him. You know something I don't?" she asked Sam, turning to her suddenly with a twinkle in her eye.

Sam finished off her scone and dropped a five dollar bill in the tip jar before gathering up her bag and the guitar.

"His name's Danny Fenton, not Danny Phantom. And yeah," she added, as she walked away, "I'm waiting for him."

Sam slept on and off outside terminal twelve for four days. She never strayed away to the restaurants for long, fearful of missing him.

On the fourth evening she was halfway through reading a book she bought from one of the stores when she heard him.

"You figured it out," he breathed. "I can't believe it."

Her head whirled around, but he wasn't there.

"I can't turn visible in here. Too many people."

"Danny," she whispered, in the direction of his voice.

Someone across the way on the other set of seats glanced at her but she didn't care.

"You're brilliant, you know that? I wasn't sure you'd get it."

"I got it," she whispered. "It took a while, but I did."

"You brought my guitar…"

"Yeah, and you better play me a song as payment." She couldn't stop smiling. It felt so good to hear his voice.

"Let's get out of here first," he said. "I don't even want to know how long you've been here."

"Four days," she grumbled as she gathered up her things.

"Ouch."

As Sam rounded a corner into an empty hallway she felt a tingling sensation spread from her arm throughout her body, and she disappeared. She was flying suddenly, weightless, drifting through the walls of the airport, through the ceiling out into the dying twilight.

Danny let her go on the roof of the airport and suddenly they were visible and he was hugging her tightly, forcing her to drop everything in her hands.

"I'm so glad you're here," he gasped into her shoulder. "You have no idea, how it's been…"

"I'm glad I'm here too," she murmured.

Pulling back from him she saw that he looked vaguely different. His hair was slightly longer, slightly shaggier. He looked disheveled. Tired. But he was in one piece and that's all that mattered to her.

"Are you.." he looked away, rubbing his neck with his hand. Something he did when he was nervous. "Are you, uh…"

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Am I what?"

He chewed on his lip a bit. She resisted the urge to kiss it. "Are you going to... stay? With me?"

She looked at him curiously. Tried to decipher his expression. "If you'll let me," she said quietly.

"It'll be really hard," he warned. "I haven't had it easy, Sam."

"Life is hard."

"I guess you got me there," he admitted.

"It won't always be this hard," Sam added thoughtfully. "The world is changing. Since you left, the attitude towards ghosts.. it's different. People are beginning to think differently. It'll be a long time coming but it's _coming."_

"I hope you're right," he said wistfully.

"I'm _always _right," she joked, tugging his grey shirt collar towards her. She leaned up towards him and planted there a long, slow kiss. She'd been waiting for this kiss for weeks and weeks. He sighed softly her and pulled her closer, pressing himself against her. The wind whistled around them. Distantly she heard the roaring of jet engines on the tarmac. Or maybe it was the roaring in her ears.

**The End**

* * *

BAM! That's the end folks! I know there's some loose ends left untied and it's kind of a cliff hanger but that's because umm there's probably going to be a sequel eventually. ;D

I hope you enjoyed this roller coaster ride of a story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Maybe I'll write a short epilogue or something, because I feel the need to...


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